Pepsi To Stop Using Aspartame

An anonymous reader writes: Pepsi believes sales of diet soda are falling because of aspartame and how the general public thinks it's a dangerous substance to consume. Even though the FDA describes aspartame as “one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved,” Pepsi has decided to stop using it. Aspartame removal is being turned into a marketing campaign of sorts, with "Now Aspartame Free" printed on cans.

Comments

danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Dangerous smangerous. I don't drink diet because it tastes terrible.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

and i see fat people drinking it all the time so it doesn't seem to be working

Re:danger vs taste

[Frag-A-Muffin]

and i see fat people drinking it all the time so it doesn't seem to be working

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

I've always found it funny when people order like that. As if the diet pop is gonna counter the 2234872184732 calories of a double big mac you're about to wolf down. Not to mention the fries (which of course has been super sized!)

When I go to McDonalds, there's no pretense of nutrition or calorie reduction. I order a regular combo with a regular coke :) Diet drinks taste awful anyways.

Re:danger vs taste

[ShanghaiBill]

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

Nope, it is because diet soda makes you fat. It promotes the wrong kind of gut bacteria. The sweet taste also triggers insulin production, when causes hunger when the sugar that the tongue predicted doesn't show up in the stomach. So people end up eating even more to compensate. Sales of Diet Pepsi are falling because people are becoming more educated about just how unhealthy that crap is. If you are thirsty, try tap water.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. (Too much) sugar is bad for you. (Too much) fat is bad for you. Sugar + Fat is _super duper_ bad for you, you get the fat and the insulin spike to blubberize the fat into your body.

So it's unhealthy to order a double Big Mac combo, but it's crazy unhealthy to gulp down a bunch of sugar with it, so that are better off with the diet coke.

Re:danger vs taste

[dirk]

I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for. You are probably the same type of person that goes to gym and tells people they should just quit because they aren't lifting enough weight or only doing cardio. The fact is, they are doing something, which is more than some people do and should be encouraged.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what a lot of people think, but you've been proven wrong by the science. Aside from building insulin resistance, diet soda contributes to leptin resistance, suppresses ghrelin, and significantly recomposes gut bacteria. The bacteria thing used to be a fringe area, but in the last 10 years we've learned that it's an enormous health issue. If you kill a bunch of gut bacteria and replace them with something else, at a bare minimum they are less likely to eat some of your food.

Re:danger vs taste

[orasio]

Overweight person here, but not from McD.

When I go to mac donalds, I get a hamburger and a diet soda (I don't really care for the fries).
Makes sense for me, a 500-600 calorie meal. I't a nice lunch, tastes good (all beef, even MCD, is awesome this side of the world), and even has lettuce and tomato.

In your example, that double big mac has 700 calories. Not a diet meal, but not that excessive. It even has a lot of lettuce, which is good against blood sugar spikes, esp. a good thing for most fat people. A diet coke is zero cal,, but a large coke in the US add 300 calories, reaching 1000 which is too much for a single meal. You are right that large fries, at 500, are not a good idea, though.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

and i see fat people drinking it all the time so it doesn't seem to be working

I will never cease to be amazed by how often I am offered useless advice about weight management from fat people (I am normal weight). Here's an analogy. Imagine you got an F on a math test in school, then offered to tutor the kid next to you that got a B or better. Nonsense, right? And yet somehow this happens with fat people. The delusion goes really deep in some people's minds.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you eaten at McDonald's recently? It's now called a "Small Mac".

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I eat a lot of fast food. All other things constant, I will gain weight (fat) if I choose sugary drinks.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

The shitty test you're talking about didn't even *test* aspartame, it tested saccharine, which hasn't been in a diet drink for several decades. More shitty "science" that shitty newspapers can't bother to actually do 2.5 seconds of research on. The last major saccharine based diet drink was Tab. Try ordering one today. You'll look like Marty McFly in 1955.

Considering the ridiculous research that's been done in the past with sweeteners, I still won't trust it, because the research has all too often been shit. Did you know that the thouroughly debunked cancer study on Aspartame fed the mice the equivalent of 14 *cases* of pop every single day? Yeah, the same amount that is in over 300 cans of pop a day. And it still didn't actually give the mice cancer. If you drank that much today, guess what you'd die of: Water poisoning.

I have no idea why the research on artificial sweeteners is so bad all the time, but I have a sneaking suspicion that HFCS producers are behind it.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight

I am overweight myself, but that there is a load of horseshit. "Diet anything" is the exact opposite of doing something to get healthier and lose weight. It's an expression of a want or need, but it's also as clear a sign as you can possibly give that you're not going to do anything to achieve it. Going from fatty to healthy takes some serious changes in one's lifestyle, and ordering diet proves that you're not willing to make those changes but instead want to keep on eating and drinking like you're used to, just not so many calories please. That doesn't work.

Re:danger vs taste

[beelsebob]

Except that if you actually go and find sources other than a sensationalist news article, you'll find several scientific studies that show that this is bullshit. Insulin production is triggered by the presence of glucose, and does not occur with the presence of aspartame even in high concentrations.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anne Thwacks]

NBC probably don't know that "Correlation does not imply causation", and if they do, they don't care.

More fat people drink the diet version ... well, seeing as it tastes awful, I would not expect thin people to drink it, would you?

Sales of diet Pepsi are falling because half of them are buying Pepsi Max instead. Not sure how it differs from the diet option. They both taste equally bad to me.

Re:danger vs taste

[cayenne8]

It would be nice if, when they make them print the ingredients on the label....and where it says "sugar"..have it also give the % of the recommended daily allowances of sugar for the avg. person's diet, like it does with other stats like carbs, protein and fat.

I saw an interesting program on Netflix the other day called Fed Up, and I didn't realize till now, that for sugar it is pretty much the only ingredient that does NOT have a daily % listed. It is due to the sugar lobby fighting reports from years back showing sugar is the real killer and reason for obesity in so many folks.

I doubt those colas would fee comfy showing that one can was like 120% of the recommended daily allowances of sugar for a day. 120% just being a made up number....I think it is in the ball park, but don't know for this posting.

Re:danger vs taste

[ooshna]

As Wilford Brimely would put it "diabeetus" not because they are on a diet.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I have diabetes. It's easy to use insulin to cover all the starchy carbohydrates in foods like burgers and fries but the large amounts of simple sugar in soda and fruit juice makes my sugar spike regardless of how much insulin I take. So I always order a diet soda no matter what kind of otherwise unhealthy shit I'm eating. Also, regular soda has a mouth feel like glue once you've acquired a taste for diet.

Re:danger vs taste

[Frag-A-Muffin]

I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for. You are probably the same type of person that goes to gym and tells people they should just quit because they aren't lifting enough weight or only doing cardio. The fact is, they are doing something, which is more than some people do and should be encouraged.

I don't do the gym thing. I just love sports. And do as much as I can. I LOVE seeing "larger" people out there on the streets jogging at a pace slower than my walking pace. THOSE are the people that are at least trying. Someone eating a double big mac combo with a diet pop is not trying. :) Just my opinion.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight

Except they aren't losing weight, they're just gaining weight at a slightly reduced rate.

One step forward, two steps back, is still one step back overall.

Re:danger vs taste

[garyisabusyguy]

jeez ya woulda thought that the aspartame lobby could afford to buy their own 5 digit uid instead of posting as AC

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Diet soda increases insulin-resistance, which causes the body to store more sugar as fat, it also raises the "hunger" level of the body, so that people tend to eat more when they consume diet sodas.

Diet soda consumption leads directly to people getting fatter.

Re:danger vs taste

[Twinbee]

How about Xylitol instead?

Re:danger vs taste

[gregsmac]

That's bullshit and bad science. Cite your sources for such blather. "proven wrong by science" you wouldn't know science if it bit you on the diet ass.

Re:danger vs taste

[Andy Dodd]

"also triggers insulin production"

If you're a Type I diabetic like myself, this is not an issue.

Diet soda is a miracle for Type I diabetics.

I am disappointed at how Pepsi is giving in to the perception that aspartame is dangerous in any way. A good question is - sales of "Diet Pepsi" were falling - was this ALL variants of "Diet Pepsi" (such as Pepsi MAX and... I forget the other variant. Last I checked there were three variants of "Diet" Pepsi, there was "original diet", Max, and something else.) "Original diet" used aspartame exclusively, others used different sweeteners (Acesulfame K, Splenda). In many cases, those sweeteners were used simply because *they tasted better* and that's likely why sales were falling.

Re:danger vs taste

[GargamelSpaceman]

I don't drink non-diet soda because it tastes terrible in 10 minutes once the bacteria get to working on it.

I like diet pepsi how it is, but I think if they change the formula I'll avoid it. Anyway, I perfer Diet Moxie when I can find it.

Re:danger vs taste

[operagost]

Protip: you can't intake no sugar, then have a high insulin response, and end up with HIGH blood sugar.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

oh really?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

just the taste of a sweetner can trigger insulin production, and therefore is triggered with aspartame.

Re:danger vs taste

[kaizendojo]

So you're saying that the Double Big Mac Combo itself is fine, healthy and calorie/fat free? Because if you aren't then your reply isn't "Nope", it's "Yes you're correct and these things (that you are describing like insulin and gut bacteria) make it worse.... etc."

Neither of them are healthy and I haven't seen the inside of a McDonalds in years.

Re:danger vs taste

[ScentCone]

Except they aren't losing weight, they're just gaining weight at a slightly reduced rate.

But ... the administration says that slightly reducing the rate at which we add on trillions more in debt is a proud accomplishment. So, this has to be similar.

Re:danger vs taste

[Andy Dodd]

Last I heard, the saccharin mess was a combination of two things:
1) They used insanely high doses for that study too, if you replaced the saccharin with sugar you would've killed the rats rather quickly.
2) The findings that DID occur were later proven to be specific to rat metabolism that did NOT apply to monkeys including the "human" subvariant.

Re:danger vs taste

[Andy Dodd]

I forgot to mention though that saccharin is still dead in the market because it has a really strong aftertaste.

Re:danger vs taste

[fahrbot-bot]

The article you referenced mentions:

It’s another example of how the microbiome — the population of microbes living in and on our bodies — can have huge effects on health.

Better the microbiome be out of whack than the macrobiome.
(see the Alt-Text for the less pleasant gut fauna transfer method)

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always found it funny when people order like that.

What's funny about eating 560 calories of a Big Mac and Diet Coke versus 950 calories of a Big Mac and large regular Coke?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, you get used to the taste, and my main reason for drinking diet is you get bored of water sometimes and the regular version with all its sugar puts me to sleep.

Re:danger vs taste

[kamapuaa]

Except weight is determined by how many calories you intake, vs. how many calories you expend. Gut bacteria may be an important issue, diet soda may hurt these gut bacteria, but that's an unrelated issue. However, clearly your logic is faulty, as insulin is well-known to suppress appetite. If you knew the first thing of what you were talking about, you wouldn't have said that...or claimed that weight is caused by the actions of magical gut bacteria...

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

Aspartame does break down into poison. One of the components it breaks down into is methanol. Wood alcohol. The stuff that makes you blind. Drinking the amount of aspartame found in 14 cases of pop every day would fill your system with a large amount of methanol. No question that's going to have negative effects.

The amount of methanol actually found in *normal* consumption of diet sodas, however, is similar to the amount found in things like fruit juice. If your body can deal with fruit juice, it can deal with aspartame-sweetened drinks. As always, it's the dose that makes the poison.

Yes, there is a positive correlation between drinking diet sodas and being overweight. But that's an expected correlation, not a causation. Seriously, what sort of person who's not prone (for whatever reasons) to weight gain is suddenly going to decide, "You know, I want to switch from normal pepsi to diet."? The people who start drinking diet are the ones having trouble with weight gain already. The problem is, a can of pepsi is 150 calories. That's the amount of calories in 1/3 cup of raisins. Yeah, it helps somewhat with your calorie consumption, but it's not the big picture on its own.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Diet coke would be the reason you gulp down the double-big-mac-combo with ultra-large fries dipped in cooking grease for added flavor.

Diet anything, with all their artificial sweeteners are bad for anyone, doubly bad for diabetics.

Re:danger vs taste

[squiggleslash]

Sales of diet Pepsi are falling because half of them are buying Pepsi Max instead

I suspect Pepsi Max would be in that bracket of "Diet sodas" whose sales are falling. In any case, could it be that Pepsi Max exists because sales of diet sodas are falling? That is, it was an attempt to remarket a failing product?

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

Going from fatty to not fatty requires precisely one thing: reducing the amount of calories in versus the amount of calories out.

Nothing else.

Some routes may be easier to take than others, reducing cravings and the like. But it all comes down to energy in vs. energy out. One can diet on eating nothing but twinkies.

Re:danger vs taste

[slashdot_commentator]

Personally, I preferred the saccharin taste to aspertame. I'd drink saccharin products today if they were available on the market.

Re:danger vs taste

[itzly]

Yes, there is a positive correlation between drinking diet sodas and being overweight.

And part of that correlation is due to the fact that there's a correlation between being overweight and having type 2 diabetes, and switching to diet sodas is an easy first step to help control T2D.

Re:danger vs taste

[itzly]

Except weight is determined by how many calories you intake, vs. how many calories you expend. Gut bacteria may be an important issue,

Gut bacteria have an effect on how many calories you take in, so they help determine weight.

Re:danger vs taste

[Coren22]

That would be because sugar is a portion of the carbohydrate total. Therefore, it already has a % daily value.

My Pure Leaf Extra Sweet tea I am having with lunch shows:

Total Carb. 28g 9%
    Sugars 28g

Those 28g of Carbs is 28g of sugar (as it is sweetened with sugar, not HFCS)

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

Wrong, you link to study that used saccarine, not relevant to this discussion, and your logic is faulty claiming it applies to any other sweetener used in diet soda.

Re:danger vs taste

[squiggleslash]

sugar (is) pretty much the only ingredient that does NOT have a daily % listed. It is due to the sugar lobby fighting reports from years back showing sugar is the real killer and reason for obesity in so many folks.

Based upon the standard label:

Total Carb: 39g 13% Sugars: 38g

the recommendations are not micromanaging which types of carb you eat - doesn't matter if you're eating potatoes or sugar, the recommendation is of the total - and for those with dietary concerns about sugars specifically (such as people with diabetes) the critical information is right there.

This makes sense. If from a health point of view, outside of specific concerns about diabetes, there's no "right" balance of sugars to non-sugars, then I wouldn't expect the label to suggest you have to eat a certain amount of sugars each day.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a long way from "makes you fat"

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

No, you leave out important thing found in fruit juice not found in diet soda. The fruit and other foods which make a tiny amount of methanol also make ethanol, which protects the body from the methanol which by the way turns into formaldehyde. So diet soda consumed with similar protection food should be fine, however it is open question if drinking alone would be fine.

As aside, nutrasweet makes my joints ache

Re:danger vs taste

[DarkOx]

I am not one to go chowing down on the cheap fast food but I do like diet soda even with a meal that is otherwise an overly caloric and generally nutritionally questionable mess. I find the consistency regular soda to be unpleasantly syrupy.

So there are some people who really just like diet cola better.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

They still sell Moxie? I haven't seen that stuff in YEARS. We always got it from the local bottling company with refillable glass bottles.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Dangerous smangerous. I don't drink diet because it tastes terrible.

I don't drink it or "Zero" for the same reason.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

The study shows that just the taste of a sweetener can cause on insulin boost, it has nothing to do with the type. The insulin response was BEFORE ingestion, so why would the type of sweetener matter?

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

I never said it makes you fat...

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's clue: don't get your medical info from TV! Especially don't bother with that charlatan Mehmet Oz.
- retired Columbia P&S faculty

Re:danger vs taste

[Chewbacon]

The insulin release theory was proven false.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

No, one can not diet (effectively) on eating nothing but twinkies. Even if you disregard all nutritional aspects, your body will still make you (over-)compensate for that sooner or later. Pretending that it's a matter of willpower to just not overeat after that diet, any diet really, is what causes the yo-yo effect. In order to get healthier by dieting, you have to keep dieting forever. Very few people can do that unless they're vitally compelled to by a medical condition.

Sure, the energy balance is what ultimately matters, but drinking "diet" soda does nothing to change that balance, because the root cause of the overeating is still there and your body almost inevitably maintains the "required" dose of calories. Overeating isn't the cause, it's a symptom. Without understanding what causes the overeating, ordering a diet soda with a Big Mac is just a cry for help, but not a step in the right direction.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

It's relevant in that it disproves 'Insulin production is triggered by the presence of glucose', it just doesn't prove it happens with aspartame as well as saccarine. However if it's a response to the sweet taste receptors then it's likely it would.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

"they are doing something"

Oh yes, what a feat, they go to McRat, order a million calories, and top it of with a "diet" coke. What an accomplishment. It must work them into a sweat.

Stop putting stuff in your mouth, fatty. Don't go to the McRat. Then you're doing something. Whining how you're doing something by ordering a "diet" coke is making up excuses to not do something, in order to put stuff into your greedy fat mouth.

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

at a bare minimum they are less likely to eat some of your food.

Gut bacteria are not "eating your food", they're making food for you. They consume that which your body was not able to break down (such as some types of starches and sugars) and produce things that the body can absorb, like short chain fatty acids. Rodent studies show that if you kill all of a rat's gut flora with antibiotics that they have to consume about 30% more calories to maintain the same weight.

If gut bacteria were consuming significant amounts of our calories we would have long ago evolved to fight them off. They help us get more calories from our food.

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

NO; WRONG

You are unscientific in your false logic. You can ONLY claim insulin response (for rats not humans) shown for the substances in that experiment that were used. You can not make claim for any other substances.

Re:danger vs taste

[Chewbacon]

Aye, drink that much regular soda and see if you find a link to heart disease, obesity, diabetes and renal failure.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you've aquired a taste for diet??

You mean, once you've kiled your taste buds? Most sodas aren't made with sugar, they're made with Corn SYRUP, which is fructose only.

Real table sugar is made up of multiple sugar forms and is easier to digest, and better for your body than pure fructose.

Then you have your "sugar alcohols" which are processed by the body like regular sugars. So many "diet" things have sugar alcohols which isn't an improvement over regular sugar at all.

Moderation, in all things, is the answer. Diet shit will kill you quicker than sugar will.

Re:danger vs taste

[StikyPad]

It has RDA of calories, and if you're drinking soda, then 100% of the calories are from sugar (or corn syrup, for most soda in the US). There is no RDA for sugar specifically because there are no scientific guidelines, not because the FDA is part of some grand conspiracy to keep it a secret.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh... talk about oversimplistic and completely discounting metabolism as a whole which places a much more significant role than you give credit for. Otherwise my 6' tall 110lbs nerd of a roommate would weight just as much as I do. Except that he doesn't. We were both behind computer screens all day, studying at night and gaming til 5am. He didn't gain any weight, I did.

That implies I have to a eat a whole lot less than my roommate to burn the same number of calories. So while he can enjoy a steak dinner and be totally fine I'm stuck with a salad and dressing on the side. That's super awesome!

Genes aside, there is a lot to the type of bacteria you maintain in your gut as exercise alone will rarely result in dramatic weightloss, it usually comes in the form of radically altering your current diet.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

You make no sense what so ever. THE SUBSTANCE WAS NOT INGESTED, it was solely based on the TASTE BUDS, and the brain response to it. Taste buds do not know what a substance is, it only knows where it falls on a scale. Your argument is illogical. If it was INGESTED then I would agree with you, but it was not.

From these results, we conclude that sweetness information conducted by thistaste nerve provides essential information for eliciting CPIR.

Re:danger vs taste

[ArcadeMan]

If you drank that much today, guess what you'd die of: Water poisoning.

Of course you would.

Re:danger vs taste

[Major Blud]

"If you're a Type I diabetic like myself"

Ditto. I love coffee (and caffeine by extension), but don't like it unsweetened. I usually use Splenda when available.

I'd be interested in Stevia, but there really doesn't seem to be much effort behind producing ready-made drinks with it. I did see Coca-Cola with Stevia in the market the other day, but it was 50% Stevia with the rest sugar, which wouldn't do us much good.

Re:danger vs taste

[gregsmac]

I read and re read this little snip it. nowhere does it make the conclusion "just the taste of a sweetener can trigger insulin production, and therefore is triggered with aspartame"

Re:danger vs taste

[Em Adespoton]

The problem is, our bodies don't treat all energy sources as equal -- different processes kick off in our bodies depending on what sort of energy sources we consume. Things like insulin production, the manufacture of fatty acids, and other key store/vs/use decisions our bodies make are based on the composition of the foods we eat. So it's possible to keep building fat while consuming fewer calories -- to the detriment of muscle production, blood flow, stomach efficiency and overall energy levels.

If you adjust your diet to eat nothing but twinkies and you are grossly overweight, you will lose weight. You will also develop a number of health problems that could stick with you even after you switched to a healthier diet.

If you are slightly overweight and you switch to the twinkie diet, you may actually experience weight gain, as more fat will be produced, less muscle, and you won't have the energy to move as much as you are used to. And then when you switch back to a "regular" diet, things will only get worse.

So the energy in vs. energy out issue is more complex than you might think. Our bodies also store energy in various ways, and consume energy in many many ways.

For the obligatory car analogy, it would be like deciding to run your diesel car on unfiltered used deep-fry oil. Sure, it's energy in/out, but you're going to be able to access less and less of that energy as time goes on -- and switching back to regular diesel isn't going to suddenly switch you back to your original fuel efficiencies.

Re:danger vs taste

[DarkOx]

One of the problems is that realistically, the amount of processed sugar be sucrose or HFCS is 0. So the daily % would be NaN.

While refined sugar isn't necessarily bad for you it servers no real dietary purpose other than bulk calories which you either don't need because you are not working in the fields all day, building stone walls by hand, walking everywhere you go etc... or could obtain just easily from some other source along with other nutrients your body does require.

You really DO need 11 (I think proteins) from dietary sources, the other nine your body can synthesize or perhaps its the other way around. You really do need fats as they are the only way to retain certain other fat soluble nutrients. Obviously we have to have sodium and potassium, lack of them can become catastrophic fairly quickly etc. Lots of these things we find in unhealthy excess in processed foods, but we do need some quantity of them; we have no need for sugar. All the sugar we need can be derived from more complex carbohydrates which physiologically are usually better for us. If health is your only criteria, ie cost and pleasure are not considerations etc, I am not sure you can recommend anyone eat sugar; at most you can say it probably won't hurt you.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the components it breaks down into is methanol. Wood alcohol. The stuff that makes you blind.

As someone that brews various alcohols, I have a problem with your statements here:
1) ALL sugars break down, in part, into methanol. In beer we use maltodextrin and germinated grains, in wine we use fruits and cane sugar, distilled liqueurs come from god damn anything under the sun since taste won't matter once you've distilled. The process of yeast eating sugars is what causes the production of ethanol (the "good" alcohol we want), methanol (the "bad" alcohol we don't want), and a small percentage of fusal alcohols.
2) That's not how methanol works in your body. You've heard that wine gives the worst hang-overs, right? That's because it has higher methanol content than other alcohols; anything distilled tosses out the first few cups, as it is almost entirely methanol and beer is just "weak" alcohol in comparison. Beer and wine should have the same percentage (per alcohol volume, not total volume) of methanol. Since beer is lower ABV, you have to drink so much more of it to get drunk, which highly dilutes the methanol. In short, it is not the total volume of methanol in your body that is dangerous but the concentration.
3) Methanol is only going to make you go blind if you drink it in highly concentrated form often. This is why when distilling liqueur, you never drink the first cup off the still--methanol has a lower boiling point and is first up the pipe.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Pepsi One? That one has been discontinued already, though.

Re:danger vs taste

[sjames]

It's not that far away when you know that an excess of insulin makes you crave carbs and sweets.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anubis IV]

In my case, I get diet drinks with my meals, not because I'm trying to cut calories (even though I could stand to lose some more weight), but because my dentist gave me the choice between either cutting regular sodas or having to use prescription mouthwash and toothpaste on an everyday basis, on account of my genes blessing me with thin tooth enamel. Given that choice, I went for the diet drinks.

Which is to say, I agree, it's a bit silly when people think that choosing a diet drink will make up for the thousands of calories they're otherwise stuffing down their throats, but not all of us are doing it for that reason. Maybe keep that in mind before making assumptions.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

What is funny is that both of you are right, but are too busy yelling at each other to notice.

Re:danger vs taste

[lgw]

The human body is not a bomb calorimeter - not everything gets fully digested, and not everything affects "resting metabolism" equally. Only for endurance athletes is "exercise" the dominant way calories are burned - for those guys, they can eat anything as long as calories in don't get too high.

For the rest of us, the glycemic index matters - for us couch potatoes it dominates.

The glycemic index (GI) is a ranking of carbohydrates on a scale from 0 to 100 according to the extent to which they raise blood sugar levels after eating. Foods with a high GI are those which are rapidly digested and absorbed and result in marked fluctuations in blood sugar levels. Low-GI foods, by virtue of their slow digestion and absorption, produce gradual rises in blood sugar and insulin levels, and have proven benefits for health. Low GI diets have been shown to improve both glucose and lipid levels in people with diabetes (type 1 and type 2). They have benefits for weight control because they help control appetite and delay hunger. Low GI diets also reduce insulin levels and insulin resistance.

Basically, most of the calories I burn are burnt by my "resting metabolism". The kind of food I eat therefore significantly changes the amount of calories my body burns. Eat too much at once, or eat too high on the glycemic index, and most people become noticable sleepy for a couple of hours - bad news for the calories your resting metabolism burns. Plus food like twinkies makes you hungry soon after as your blood sugar falls as quickly as it rose, challenging your willpower in a way that, e.g. oatmeal doesn't.

For those of us with a sedentary lifestyle, getting a little regular exercise makes a huge impact on weight loss, far beyond the calories burned in the exercise itself, because it raises that resting metabolism for some time after the exercise, and some studies say it also makes your insulin response better (so less problem with Twinkies).

Re:danger vs taste

[Njorthbiatr]

Tomato juice breaks down into more methanol than your soda.

Aspartame doesn't cause methanol poisoning.

Re:danger vs taste

[Coren22]

I don't drink non-diet soda because it tastes terrible in 10 minutes once the bacteria get to working on it.

Bolemia?

Re:danger vs taste

[Imagix]

14 cases of pop every day...going to have negative effects

Drinking 119+ litres of _water_ every day is going to have negative effects. (14 cases, 24 cans of pop per case, 355 mL per can, 119.28 L) Healthy kidneys can process about 0.8 - 1 L per hour... so 119 L in, 24 L out, where's the other 95 L going?

Re:danger vs taste

[QRDeNameland]

The sweet taste also triggers insulin production, when causes hunger when the sugar that the tongue predicted doesn't show up in the stomach.

There is a quite a bit of contrary evidence to that hypothesis. For one thing, the onset of Type II Diabetes, the most glaring result of disturbed insulin response, is associated with decreased rather than increased first-phase insulin response, so if artificial sweeteners are increasing first-phase insulin response it is not clear why that would be a problem.

And if artificial sweeteners cause an overproduction of insulin in the face of no actual glucose, then consuming them in the absence of no accompanying carbohydrate should be expected to trigger hypoglycemia as insulin triggers body tissues to absorb blood glucose. Yet there is no evidence that this actually happens.

That said, if the choice is between artificial sweeteners and no artificial sweeteners, then the safer bet is not to consume them as they have no precedent in our food supply for most of human evolution. However, if the choice is between artificial sweeteners and the equivalent quantity of sugar (which also has no precedent in our food supply in the quantities consumed in modern diets and has far more well-established deleterious effects on metabolism), the risk of artificial sweeteners seems pretty low in comparison based on currently available evidence.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

It says something tasting sweet causes insulin production. Does aspartame taste sweet?

Re:danger vs taste

[DarkOx]

You are the kind of person that keeps expending effort on the unproductive an ineffective apparently.

Would you say an unemployed person buying scratch offs should be applauded. After all at least they are doing something to try and solve their financial problems.

Yes if they are drinking diet soda as part of some overall plan to regulate their calorie intake, without soda having to be one more thing they give up fine, good for them.

The thing is they most likely are not doing that when you see them drinking diet soda while sitting in front of a single meal that still represent ~75% of their daily recommended calorie intake. They probably just like diet soda (me, don't like the syrupy throat coating feeling of the regular stuff). or have been sold on the idea that they can someone get healthy by just making that one change, which is misguided enough to be harmful.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

No... gut bacteria plays a huge amount in your weight. They have done experiments that changed the weight of lab mice just by doing fecal transplants.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

My issue is with his believe that only a his absolute statement that insulin production is only triggered by the presence of glucose, and does not occur with the presence of aspartame even in high concentrations.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Cells have many surface receptors on them. You don't know that only the same set of taste receptors was triggered, and that that there wasn't some other set of receptors that was either triggered or inhibited by an untested second substance.

Re:danger vs taste

[plover]

I'm much more cynical, and I don't think Pepsi is giving in to anyone. I think they're trying to exploit people's fears that "OMG chemicals bad". It's more like they're advertising "We're the only brand that dares to print arsenic-free on our products."

I think the real problem with Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max is that they taste more or less like regular Pepsi. Their advertising slogan may as well be "Pepsi - for when you can't afford actual Coca-Cola."

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't pronounce it, don't drink it !!

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

Really? This is the argument? They went though the spectrum of tastes, but this is what you are going to claim? What other receptors on your taste buds responds with insulin?

Re:danger vs taste

[Dragonslicer]

Yup, but it's almost impossible to find outside of New England, and fairly difficult to find outside of Maine.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that's bullshit. A 500ml serving of Coke here in the UK is 200 calories. That's 200 calories. So yeah, having a diet coke won't make your meal small, but it cuts 200 calories, and cutting calories is all that matters in dieting. I can go to McDonalds and have a chicken burger (I don't eat beef) and a diet soft drink and it comes in at 400 calories, which is actually very reasonable for a meal. Yes, cutting out the fries is what is really making it reasonable, but it doesn't change the fact that would be 50% more calories with a non-diet soft drink. (25% of the meal again even if you include fries).

I really hate the 'diet drinks won't stop you being fat' thing, because everyone knows that. All it does is make people think that normal soft drinks are negligable, which they are not. The easest two ways to cut calories is to never drink calories and reduce carbohydrate intake (like chips), because we don't feel like we have eaten as much when we ingest calories in those forms, and the easest way to lose weight is to calorie count.

You are not helping the problem by stating the obvious (diet drinks don't make you lose weight through magic!) and giving a misleading message.

Re:danger vs taste

[electrosoccertux]

Aspartame does break down into poison. One of the components it breaks down into is methanol. Wood alcohol. The stuff that makes you blind. Drinking the amount of aspartame found in 14 cases of pop every day would fill your system with a large amount of methanol. No question that's going to have negative effects.

The amount of methanol actually found in *normal* consumption of diet sodas, however, is similar to the amount found in things like fruit juice. If your body can deal with fruit juice, it can deal with aspartame-sweetened drinks. As always, it's the dose that makes the poison.

Yes, there is a positive correlation between drinking diet sodas and being overweight. But that's an expected correlation, not a causation. Seriously, what sort of person who's not prone (for whatever reasons) to weight gain is suddenly going to decide, "You know, I want to switch from normal pepsi to diet."? The people who start drinking diet are the ones having trouble with weight gain already. The problem is, a can of pepsi is 150 calories. That's the amount of calories in 1/3 cup of raisins. Yeah, it helps somewhat with your calorie consumption, but it's not the big picture on its own.

it doesn't break down in your stomach, it breaks down above 112F or something.

The most recent study I read was in 2008 or so (and yes, I read the entire thing). The conclusion was the per-kilogram consumption level in mice found to increase the CHANCES (I don't recall if it was additive or multiplicative) of getting cancer by 5% was the quantity of aspartame found in 12-12oz cans of diet coke.

And you had to drink that quantity every day for ... 10 years, or something.
Sometime that I never, ever do or will do, and if I did, I would have teeth problems long before cancer problems

and even if you were drinking that much, the quality of life improvement because you enjoy it so is probably worth the 5% increase in risk for cancer

Re:danger vs taste

[gregsmac]

I guess you can make the leap/assumptions based on two kinds of sweetener. even though they did not make that conclusion. I can not as it doesn't say that. "just the taste of a sweetener can trigger insulin production, and therefore is triggered with aspartame"

Re:danger vs taste

[ArmoredDragon]

I go to McDonalds somewhat often, and typically I order a spicy chicken sandwich off of the dollar menu with instructions to go light on the mayo (otherwise they glob it on there) and add mustard and a slice of tomato and a small fry with no salt. (The main purpose of asking for no salt is so they make it fresh rather than from the pile that's been sitting there. The sodium content otherwise doesn't bother me.) I also get a courtesy water cup.

Total is somewhere like $2.50 and typically leaves me satisfied. The spicy chicken in particular helps with that (I've always found that spicy foods help me feel sated.) I think in all its 400 calories, which is slightly higher than the chicken salads I get from subway even more often.

I guess I'm just one of those weirdos who doesn't go calorie crazy at fast food joints, nor do I eat sugary breakfasts (usually a 250 calorie Jimmy Dean turkey sausage, cheese, and egg biscuit.) But in my defense, I work in an office type environment with little physical activity (until I get home and then do a 6 mile daily bike ride, and then dinner always has less than 1,200 calories.)

And yes, this is all a part of my ongoing weight loss plan (which is succeeding rather well and has been ongoing for a year. Whoever says you can't diet and eat fast food is dead wrong.)

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

You're both wrong.

Saliva begins to digest your food, and the tissues in your mouth and throat (upper esophagus, but not the lower) begin to absorb things as you chew them, similar to the lining of your intestines.

The other guy is right in saying that taste has precisely fuckall to do with an insulin response. Insulin is regulated by and for the control of blood glucose levels. But your argument isn't completely off the mark either. That response can come from immediate ingestion by absorption through the mouth and throat tissues. But then you're back to being wrong because you think that's somehow different from ingestion through any other tissue.

The fact is, glucose levels are regulated separately from anything you may or may not be able to taste. The blandest white bread that barely registers as having any taste at all will spike your blood glucose levels and cause a reactionary insulin spike. And the most tooth-vaporizingly sweet candy will barely cause any insulin response at all because it contains something that isn't recognized as glucose.

What your quoted study seems to show is that the regulatory systems in the human body cannot distinguish between (2R,3S,4R,5R)-2,3,4,5,6-Pentahydroxyhexanal and 2H-16,2-benzothiazol-1,1,3-trione. I find that unlikely.

Re:danger vs taste

[ezelkow1]

+1

I never understood the diet hate. Personally I cant stand the regular stuff for the syrupy taste and mouth/throat feel, plus that coated mouth after taste. Its also why I prefer pepsi in general since even diet coke the moment it gets to a non-frigid temperature also starts to leave a funky aftertaste for me while pepsi has never done that

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for.

Modeling weight change as "calories in minus calories burned" is as primitive as using the Greek elements of earth,air,fire, and water. The reality of how gut flora interacts with different foods, how efficiently they absorb and break down food, and how consistently ingesting specific foods over time can change the composition of intestinal bacteria is far more complicated than USRDA numbers.

The real difference between a fat person and a skinny person isn't how many calories they eat, it's how many calories they shit out.

Re:danger vs taste

[ProfBooty]

I'd be quite happy if it triggered insulin production, but that would require a working pancreas.

Re:danger vs taste

[netsavior]

Fountain Diet Coke still contains Saccharin (Or at least it did the last time I got a box of syrup), which is why it tastes better.

Re:danger vs taste

[tarius8105]

It doesnt matter for diabetics. If you look at medications like Januvia they increase insulin production. If diet soda cause the body to release more insulin, it would help lower blood sugar since artificial sweeteners does not cause blood sugar levels to rise.

Re:danger vs taste

[edtice1559]

I guess if a fat person takes up jogging, we should make fun of them for going so slowly. It won't really help?!

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

you are not working in the fields all day, building stone walls by hand, walking everywhere you go

Speak for yourself. Some of us are very active and even live on farms or work skilled labor jobs like construction.

Re:danger vs taste

[GargamelSpaceman]

Bacteria eat sugar and turn mouth to nasty tasting bacteria-poop

Re:danger vs taste

[Kjella]

I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for. You are probably the same type of person that goes to gym and tells people they should just quit because they aren't lifting enough weight or only doing cardio. The fact is, they are doing something, which is more than some people do and should be encouraged.

Oh please, one of the most common forms of self-delusion is to focus on one little thing you do that is contrary to your usual behavior or line you won't cross making you not such a bad guy after all. Like focusing on that your bacon-cheese, greasy meat and white bread tower drenched in dressing with lots of oil-soaked fries has a leaf of lettuce and a slice of tomato too. And you ordered a Diet Coke, it's not that unhealthy right? I guess some of them are honest with themselves, it's still a calorie monster just without the final topping. But I'm guessing a lot more are lying to themselves, I know I've been prone to do so.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*

Until there is a separate study conducted that shows the nerve impulses generated by the taste buds in the presence of saccharine is precisely the same as that generated in the presence of aspartame, the other guy is correct: your logic is faulty.

Re:danger vs taste

[blue9steel]

That would be because sugar is a portion of the carbohydrate total. Therefore, it already has a % daily value.

True but misleading. Your total sugar consumption should be MUCH lower than your total carbohydrate consumption. This is especially true when the sugar source contains fructose, as that can only be metabolized in the liver which has a lower total capacity.

Re:danger vs taste

[azcoyote]

Yeah, I'm pretty bad at cutting down my own gluttony, but simply switching to diet soda has caused me to lose quite a few pounds, fit into my old pants, and maintain a consistently unhealthy weight. It beats getting fatter and fatter. I didn't want to switch to diet soda because it tastes so bad, but after committing to the switch it actually tastes good to me. Since I'm not getting fatter, that implies that despite all of my overeating, my main excess of calories still came from drinking soda. Despite what people have said, too, I do not eat more unhealthy food now that I drink diet soda. I eat either the same amount or less than I did before.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

The blandest white bread that barely registers as having any taste at all will spike your blood glucose levels and cause a reactionary insulin spike.

Here is your problem.

However, starch, which is nutritive but non-sweet, did not elicit CPIR although rats showed a strong preference for starch which is a source of glucose.

In this case starchy foods did not illicit the response that would on injection, however under your argument it would have.

Re:danger vs taste

[blue9steel]

Except weight is determined by how many calories you intake, vs. how many calories you expend.

Sort of. It also depends on how many you absorb vs. excrete. Additionally, the effect of those calories on the composition of your tissue can be profound depending on the type. Don't believe me, stop eating protein or fat for three months and let me know how that goes for you.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

America has the most overweight people of any country I believe, and you guys also drink the most cola. And not a lot of it is diet.

Quit worrying about aspartame and drink more of it, it may help.

Re:danger vs taste

[Aaden42]

I lost 180lbs while drinking 2+ liters of diet soda daily (and have kept it off, still drinking diet). Sorry, but aspartame doesn't make you fat. Eating too much does, period.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you and your dense as lead false dichotimized condescending attitude.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

So until there is a study that shows that a given substance on the planet falls at the rate of 9.8 m/s^2 the logic would be faulty to say that a given substance falls at that speed?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude ... do you even science ?

First the experiment was made on rats. Second, if they didn't make the test with aspartame, you cannot (as in *never*) make the assumption that, even without ingestion, the reaction is not linked somehow to the test element not being aspartame. You need a control group with aspartame, period.

Finally, mind the wording of the conclusion: "From these results, we conclude that sweetness information conducted by thistaste nerve provides essential information for eliciting CPIR." Since it seems you don't science much, I'll translate that for you: "sweetness information *may* play a role in CPIR but does not necessarily *causes* it".

Re:danger vs taste

[firewrought]

I've always found it funny when people order like that. As if the diet pop is gonna counter the 2234872184732 calories of a double big mac you're about to wolf down.

Big Mac: 530 calories. Large fries (no ketchup): 510 calories. Large coke: 280 calories. I wouldn't ridicule a 20% calorie reduction made by those switching to diet. And that's before refills are taken into account. If you're an obese person who's been drinking full-calorie beverages, a shift like that is enough to start taking weight off, provided you don't "reward" your effort with a HoneyBun later on.

The problem isn't the diet coke (gut bacteria research aside)... it's the other 1040 calories. Hold the mayo (doesn't apply to Big Mac?) and save 100 more calories. Drop the fries for apple slices plus a small bag of potato chips (later that afternoon) and save 200 more calories. Take the stairs for 4-5 stories to get that bag of potato chips from the top floor vending machine and now you've got a little cardio happening.

None of that's going to be enough to get you to your ideal weight, but all you have to do is move the needle a little bit and amazing things will start happening, because you will start being in control of you.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Calories add together. Cut out a 300 calorie soda, your meal has 300 fewer calories. It doesn't matter if the rest of it was a salad with 400 or a burger with 1200. The soda is still worth 300. Your jovial schadenfreude is doing nothing but confuse you about how weight loss occurs.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

> for when you can't afford actual Coca-Cola

Yeah, 99% of the time, they are the exact same price...

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

So again, according to your argument we have to test every object on the planet to be able to say that it falls at the standard rate of speed for gravity.

Re:danger vs taste

[QRDeNameland]

Going from fatty to not fatty requires precisely one thing: reducing the amount of calories in versus the amount of calories out. Nothing else.

Going from a giant to a normal height person requires precisely one thing: reducing the amount of calories in versus the amount of calories out. Nothing else. After all, the only way that a person becomes a giant is through consuming more calories than they expend (if you don't agree, you are denying the laws of thermodynamics), so logically reversing the thermodynamic balance should reverse the condition. Right?

Or...just maybe, thermodynamics does not tell us anything useful about the causation of (or potential cures for) biological problems. That whole mindset is a result from one of science's greatest obstacles to arriving at the truth...that the first thing we learn about a given topic (in this case, the discovery of biological calorimetry around the turn of the 20th century) becomes a lens through which all further observations are interpreted, and it is not until those initial assumptions are challenged that it becomes clear that the initial observations did not imply nearly what was assumed. The relationship of cholesterol to heart disease is another example of this dynamic...the initial discovery of cholesterol and the first crude methods of measuring it, and then the discovery that atherosclerotic lesions were rich in cholesterol, led to assumptions that it was dietary cholesterol that was the main determinant of serum cholesterol and high total serum cholesterol was the primary cause of heart disease. Both of these assumptions were disproved nearly 40 years ago but yet that flawed initial science holds considerable sway over nutritional advice to this day.

Re:danger vs taste

[SirMasterboy]

Maybe they would simply be even fatter if they were drinking regular?

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

So until there is a study that shows that a given substance on the planet falls at the rate of 9.8 m/s^2 the logic would be faulty to say that a given substance falls at that speed?

Were the effects of gravity based on what the substance was, yes, it would be fallacious to claim that any specific substance felt a specific gravitational effect until it had been tested. Human metabolism depends heavily on the substances subject to it, and therefore testing a specific substance before claiming as a fact that it reacts a certain way is required.

As for this "before ingestion" reaction to aspartame, what, the body releases insulin by just looking at a diet drink? I don't think so. Once it hits the bloodstream, metabolism deals with it.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

We are not talking about the metabolism.. Why do yall keep going there. The taste buds are prior to ingestion, in fact it is part of the system that helps prevent us from ingesting bad stuff.

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

But aspartame tastes like ass; splenda is so much better. I drive 25 minutes on congested road once a month to stock up on Diet Coke with splenda because only one store in the area carries it. Hope coca-cola transitions all their diet pop, diet lime coke with splenda would be awesome

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

I'd be interested in Stevia,

I took a look at buying Stevia in the store awhile back. I am also a reader of contents labels, so I put it back on the shelf really fast. The first ingredient listed: dextrose. That may not shock you until you remember that the FDA requires ingredients to be listed in order from most to least. More dextrose in stevia than stevia. And who remembers from BioChem 327: dextrose is ... two glucoses.

More fun facts about stevia here.

Re:danger vs taste

[jonnyj]

Given a choice between something that I'm scared might kill me (diet soda) and something that I know is likely to kill me (regular soda), I'll choose the former over the latter every time. But you know what? I don't have to make that choice.

We have alternatives, people! Tap water is good for us, good for the environment, stunningly cheap and tastes pretty good. Tea and coffee are actually good for us and taste great. I just don't get why anyone would pour chemical effluent down their throat when the alternatives are so much more attractive.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

The last major saccharine based diet drink was Tab. Try ordering one today. You'll look like Marty McFly in 1955.

Well, no... because in 1955, Tab hadn't yet been invented. A more appropriate analogy would be that you'd look like Marty McFly in 2015.

Re:danger vs taste

[Dogtanian]

Sales of diet Pepsi are falling because half of them are buying Pepsi Max instead. Not sure how it differs from the diet option. They both taste equally bad to me.

Depends which one you mean- apparently there's a "Pepsi Max" (nee "Diet Pepsi Max") on the US market which has more caffeine than regular Diet Pepsi. The "Pepsi Max" sold in the UK since the early 90s is really just... Diet Pepsi marketed towards men instead of women.

About 15 years ago, I tasted some (UK market) Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max side by side just out of curiosity- the difference was minor at best.

The reason for having the two was- I assumed- more to do with marketing. Diet Pepsi and diet drinks in general were marketed and perceived as "girl" drinks, which probably put off male consumers. Pepsi Max launched with (very) 90s male-oriented advertising. (*)

What surprises me is that Coca Cola took around 15 years to do the same marketing trick with Coke Zero. That- at least- has the excuse of being a clearly different product from Diet Coke. (It sucks because it follow's Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max's nasty over-intense "sweetness" rather than Diet Coke's less intense but more unpleasantly "hollow" sensation (**)).

On the other hand, it means that some men (e.g. my boss) might still have a legitimate reason to buy Diet Coke instead of Coke Zero, which he doesn't like.

Personally, I think almost all diet soft drinks are horrible, except Sugar Free Irn Bru because it's one of the very few- if not the only one- that avoids both the above pitfalls if it's properly chilled. Plus, it's not over-sweet, it's got caffeine in it, and IT'S SCOTTISH! (^_^)

(*) What's weirder; the fact that with the wonder of the modern Internet YouTube (cough) I can find obscure twenty-year-old adverts in under a minute, or the fact that that advert still seems familiar to me after all that time. (I remembered the annoying "ooh" at the end even before watching it).

(**) You might recognise this as "my mouth thinks this is sweet, but some part of my reptilian brain knows damn well this is carbohydrate-free chemical-flavoured water and is refusing to give me any sense of satisfaction in drinking it").

Re:danger vs taste

[cayenne8]

It has RDA of calories, and if you're drinking soda, then 100% of the calories are from sugar (or corn syrup, for most soda in the US). There is no RDA for sugar specifically because there are no scientific guidelines, not because the FDA is part of some grand conspiracy to keep it a secret.

Well, the WHO tried to set very specific and LOW limits on what human daily sugar consumption should have been a few years ago. The US sugar consortium had our govt basically tell the WHO to remove such bad and low recommendations or we'd withhold our funds and a lot of that language was stricken from the WHO recommendations.

There was apparently an attempt to lower sugar recommendations from The McGovern committee to study food and the US.

Here

And interesting video on the report too HERE.

Here's a little of what WHO was proposing

. Give this movie a watch, it is free to stream on Netflix, called Fed Up . It has some very interesting insights into sugar and its impact on society from since about the 70's...

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

We are not talking about the metabolism.

You are talking about release of insulin, which is a major player on the metabolic system.

The taste buds are prior to ingestion,

They are prior to swallowing, but they are in the mouth, and the tongue has a wonderful blood supply which happily absorbs things that the taste buds taste. Kinda hard to keep it from being absorbed.

it is part of the system that helps prevent us from ingesting bad stuff.

Like aspartame? Two amino acids?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, a can of pepsi is 150 calories. That's the amount of calories in 1/3 cup of raisins. Yeah, it helps somewhat with your calorie consumption, but it's not the big picture on its own.

~3000 excess calories equals about a pound of fat. That is only 20 cans, so if someone habitually drinks soda it will make a difference in the long term.

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

Yes, the rat brain reacted to nervous system sensing saccharine, that's all that can be said.

You cannot make a claim for any other substance without testing.

Your quoting a sentence making invalid unscientific conclusion doesn't make that true.

Re:danger vs taste

[master_kaos]

Sure, if you like taking laxatives with your drinks

Re:danger vs taste

[skids]

It is not silly at all to order that. A double big mac combo with a diet soda is 1260 calories. With a sugared coke it is 1580. At a calorie budget of 2000-2600 calories per day for a sedantary male, saving that 320 calories is the difference between being able to eat 760-1320 calories at other meals, or having to scrimp by on 440-1000 for the entire rest of the day.

Not to mention the coke has a high glycemic index. The fries and white bread may be partially balanced by the meat, but add sugar and that balance is going to get way out of whack.

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

"spectrum of taste" is for culinary school. They rats responded to sucrose and saccharine. That's hardly testing with all common simple sweet chemicals, and not enough to draw any conclusion about sucralose or stevia or any other artificial sweetener.

Those would have to be tested to make a claim, and then only valid for rats

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Put a LSD tab in your mouth and tell MD your body is not absorbing it even if you don't eat it.

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

We already know plenty of objects will not fall at the standard rate for gravity. Helium balloons do not and will not in experiment. You are very dense

Re:danger vs taste

[master_kaos]

Except his steak may have less calories than your salad if you are putting on more than a tablespoon or two of salad dressing...

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

Experiments would show photons don't fall at that rate (though they are affected by gravity), helium balloons do not. Rockets don't.

Hmm, maybe you're confused.

Re:danger vs taste

[QRDeNameland]

Most sodas aren't made with sugar, they're made with Corn SYRUP, which is fructose only. Real table sugar is made up of multiple sugar forms and is easier to digest, and better for your body than pure fructose.

Ummm...no. The 'corn syrup' you cite is 'high fructose corn syrup', not 'ALL fructose corn syrup'. Specifically it is HFCS-55, which 55% fructose/45% glucose and small amounts of other sugars. It is 'high-fructose' compared to ordinary corn syrup which is virtually 100% glucose or maltose (two bound glucose molecules).

'Real' table sugar is sucrose which is a glucose molecule bound to a fructose, I.e., 50-50 glucose to fructose. So far, there is precious little evidence of any significant difference in metabolic effects between sucrose and HFCS. The big thing with the advent of HFCS 35-40 years ago is that people have been consuming so much more total sugar overall since its introduction.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

"Artificial sweeteners seemed to encourage a group of bacteria called Bacteroides and seemed to kill off another group called Clostridiales. Scientists are just beginning to understand what kinds of bacteria people have living inside their digestive systems and what balance might be healthy. But having too many Bacteroides and too few Clostridiales is a pattern sometimes seem in people with diabetes."

Sounds conclusive.

"The researchers used mostly saccharine in their controlled experiments, but they said in early tests the mice responded the same whatever sweetener they used – saccharine, sucralose, aspartame or others. This baffled them, because the sweeteners are chemically very different from one another. "

More hard evidence.

" It’s worth more research, they said."

This was the only conclusive thing about that study. As is typical, it is reported in a way to get people to click on it.

Re:danger vs taste

[master_kaos]

Hey I am one of those larger people out jogging. We need to jog slow for pacing. Im lugging 100+extra lbs then most typical runners. Strap on a 60lb backpack (I will have extra leg muscle due to my weight) and see if you can run your normal speed.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Losing weight is a war of attrition. It is about winning as many little victories as you can. Eventually you change your habits, and that is when the weight begins to fall off. Diet soda does matter.

Re:danger vs taste

[skids]

Sales of Pepsi on my part rose when the regional Coke distributor stopped shipping Splenda Coke to what seems like all of New England.

I don't buy too much into "aspartame bad, mkay" (though I suspect it may be more likely to cause me headaches, anecdotally, but then my initial trials of Zevia were not promising on that front.. more data needed there) but Splenda tastes MUCH better once your taste buds adapt to it, and even though I prefer Coke over Pepsi I made the switch because compared to Diet Coke, even store-brand splenda sweetened soda tasted better. I still drink regular diet coke in restaurants or when the grocery store (frequently) runs of of alternates.

Sales of Pepsi on my part fell to 0 when, last year, the regional Pepsi Distributor decided all of New England had to go without Pepsi One.

Sales of Price Chopper store brand are up, up, up, at least where I shop. Yes I went there. Was forced to really.

Meanwhile I watch cases of vanilla-vita-lemon-yuk variants of these colas sit on the shelves untouched and wonder why distributors think nobody was buying the Splenda. Maybe they got their bar codes mixed up.

Re:danger vs taste

[master_kaos]

Seriously? I am losing a bunch of weight, and yes sometimes I go order the double burger from my local burger joint with extra cheese and a diet soda. Guess what? I account for those calories, and I will often skip the fries.

Lets check out nutritional information for mcdonalds --- Double Quarter pounder with cheese -- 740 calories Large fries -- 560 calories. For a total of 1300 calories.
Large soda -- 320calories. So yes, getting that diet soda saves me 320 calorie.s

Since I need 2800 calories per day to maintain, that still leaves me with 1500 calories for the rest of the day to lose weight.

Since you are going to be eating lunch anyways you may be eating an extra what 400 calories by going to mcdonalds instead of a home cooked meal? Since I often skip the fries Ill actually be about the same.

Re:danger vs taste

[jellomizer]

That is the problem with Diet food anyways.
If you want to lose weight. Stop eating "Diet Food"
If you are going to indulge in something, you are better off in eating the non-Diet equivalent.
1. It will satisfy you more. You can have a piece of 300 calorie dessert and you will satisfied. Or you chow down on 4 or 5 100 calorie diet snacks.
2. Gives you energy. If you can get non-empty calories. You get more energy out of your day. So you can go out and get more active.
3. Too few calories, puts your body in starvation mode. This means it will slow your metabolism so when you do eat it will go to fat, because it won't known when you will eat again.

If you are going to have a Soda, I like real Cane sugar soda. It tastes better, and when you drink a potion you feel satisfied and you really don't want an other glass.

Diet Soda, sends your body mixed messages. So it thinks it has sugar but it doesn't so your body will try to process it. Leaving you feeling hungry.

Re:danger vs taste

[master_kaos]

Ok, if you meet me right now you would associate me as a fat person(and rightfully so). Which I am at 278lbs. However, 7 months ago I was 360lbs. Thing is, just because you are skinny doesnt mean that you know shit about nutrition, and just because I am fat, doesnt mean I dont know anything about weight management. Sure before I knew "eating too much makes me fat", but I have done A LOT of research in the past 7 months and probably know a lot more than the average person about weight management even though I am fat.

And what is "normal weight"? Ever heard of skinny-fat?. You could easily be a "normal" weight at 170lbs but still be at 35% body fat percentage. Who would be healthier a 170lb person at 35% body fat or someone at 220lbs at 10%BF?

Re:danger vs taste

[master_kaos]

And your post leads directly to people becoming more dumb.

Re:danger vs taste

[quantaman]

I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for.

Assuming the artificial sweetener itself doesn't cause obesity (or doesn't help much) due to some mechanism like triggering further hunger or screwing with gut bacteria.

In that case drinking the soda makes them think they did something healthy, and it gives them license to either indulge or not do anything further.

If they only had the option of a sugary beverage they knew was unhealthy they may have responded by reducing the size of the beverage and meal and actually losing weight.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I always find it funny when I decide to break my diet to get a cheeseburger and I get ridiculed for not accompanying that with 300 calories of sugar. Good logic.

Re:danger vs taste

[Lab Rat Jason]

I like this one better...

http://xkcd.com/641/

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

This is especially true when the sugar source contains fructose, as that can only be metabolized in the liver which has a lower total capacity.

As opposed to what? Sucrose? Sucrose is half fructose which also needs to be metabolized in the liver. Once your body breaks sucrose into it's base sugars, it's pretty much the same ratio as high fructose syrup. Worse, since sucrose isn't as sweet, sodas made with it give you more fructose for your liver to break down. HFCS might be bad, but your explanation of why doesn't make sense.

Re:danger vs taste

[Megol]

Erythritol have less side effects.

Re:danger vs taste

[untaken_name]

They will in vacuum. Helium is lighter than air. It is not an anti-gravity gas.

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

Your body cannot "make" you eat something. You have a brain. Different diets can cause different cravings and you may not have the willpower to override your cravings, but that's your own problem.

The facts are facts: weight loss is a matter of calories in vs. calories out, and you absolutely can lose weight eating twinkies. More to the point, this professor did it as a demonstration of this fact (he took a multivitamin, ate some celery, etc to make sure he got his essential nutrients, but the vast majority of his calories came from twinkies and other junkfood).

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

Metabolism has been studied. It does not vary that greatly between individuals with the same activity levels. I seriously recommend that if you want to follow up your anecdote, you do actual calorie counts over a several week period between yourself and your roomate and keep track of walking distances and other forms of athletic activity. Then bring your actual data here and try to prove all of the science wrong with your two datapoints.

Re:danger vs taste

[Megol]

I'd be interested in Stevia,

I took a look at buying Stevia in the store awhile back. I am also a reader of contents labels, so I put it back on the shelf really fast. The first ingredient listed: dextrose. That may not shock you until you remember that the FDA requires ingredients to be listed in order from most to least. More dextrose in stevia than stevia. And who remembers from BioChem 327: dextrose is ... two glucoses.

So you look at one product that contains stevia and draws some general conclusion from that?!?
Just buy a product that doesn't contain a sugar instead.

More fun facts about stevia here.

Seems like the standard uninformed and skewed bullshit so common of sites like that, including bullshit cancer scare, complaining about "unnatural" processes etc.

Re:danger vs taste

[aliquis]

The "diet" anything or aspartame?

While aspartame isn't supposed to taste just the same as sugar it's usually used with acesulfame k and that's supposed to taste similar.

Personally I've eaten lots of it and I don't notice any weird taste.

I know saccharin and cyclamate has been considered worse for longer and that there's taste issues with those but I always see this damn comment about aspartame sweetened things but for obvious reasons normally from people who don't consume these products.

But is it really about aspartame or is it about some other sweetener and these people just haven't tasted enough things to have a good opinion and is just bunching it all together?

And if so is it worth a 5: insightful?

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

" They have benefits for weight control because they help control appetite and delay hunger".

Funny, it's almost like I didn't write "Some routes may be easier to take than others, reducing cravings and the like."

getting a little regular exercise makes a huge impact on weight loss

Yes, that would be the "calories out" part of where I wrote "amount of calories in versus the amount of calories out".

It almost seems like you're having a debate with someone else.

Count your calories and estimate your calorie burn every day and make sure that you maintain a higher burn rate than consumption rate. And you will lose weight - it's really that simple. Yes, eating a lot of simple carbs and sugars will make you hungrier and sleepier - I never said it wouldn't. But that doesn't change how weight loss works. It's still "in" vs. "out".

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

Here, you can prove me wrong right now in just a couple weeks. We'll work on the honor system! Maintain a strict calorie count every day for the next four weeks, and do a good estimate of your caloric burn by standard formulae. Consume say 500 calories less every day than you burn. Weigh yourself before and after on an accurate scale under the same conditions (clothing, time of day, etc) - perhaps the average of a couple days of weighings at the beginning and end. Come back and tell me the results. If you didn't lose weight, I'll take you at your word and post an apology. How does that sound?

You realize that this "experiment" has been done again and again and time again, right?

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

The amount of ethanol in fruit juice is in the dozens of ppm quantities, like the methanol. Where's your reference that several millilitres of ethanol "protects the body from methanol"?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

"Overweight person...not from McD...When I go to Macdonalds..."

The denial is strong with this one.

Re:danger vs taste

[Copid]

I've heard this many times before, but not from any reputable sources. Do you know where the claim originally comes from? I can't help but think it sounds like something somebody just made up as a post-hoc explaination for why tomato juice is still OK but diet soda will kill us all.

Re:danger vs taste

[Copid]

Seconded on skipping the fries. A decent burger gives me way more enjoyment per calorie than even the best fries. A burger and a half would be a way better meal for me than a burger and fries by just about any metric.

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

This is a strange post.

1) How does this have anything to do with anything that I wrote?

2) How is this anything but agreeing with what I wrote, that it's the concentration of the methanol that matters? (note: it's a myth that only methanol causes hangovers; ethanol does also, although methanol is far worse per unit mass)

3) Methanol poisoning can be acute or chronic. A couple shots of spirits containing 10-20% methanol can cause serious optic nerve damage in one sitting. A few shots of pure methanol can kill you in one sitting.

And yes, I know how one distills liquer. :) While there's no exact rules, a general approach is to toss off anything that has a "chemical" smell (which doesn't come from methanol, but from acetone, which has a fairly similar boiling point to methanol, nearly as high), recycle anything that has a "fruity" smell (ethyl acetate, which has a boiling point very similar to ethanol and much higher than that of methanol), and keep only that which smells only like alcohol. Methanol of course also smells like alcohol but the lower boiling point leads it to get mainly tossed from the first cup.

There's also a home test one can do for methanol if you want to be really sure - you expose it to an oxidizer, such as potassium dichromate with sulfuric acid. Ethanol oxidizes to fruity-scented acetylaldehyde while methanol oxidizes to foul, pungent formaldehyde which is a very easy scent to detect even in small quantities. But that's really not necessary with proper distilling.

Re:danger vs taste

[reboot246]

It gives me a splitting headache. All artificial sweeteners do.

I use Stevia, but I don't drink soft drinks anyway.

Re:danger vs taste

[Widowwolf]

"Tap water is good for us, good for the environment, stunningly cheap and tastes pretty good" I live in Drought Stricken California where the water is Chemical added, High mineral content and tastes like piss you insensitive clod!

Re:danger vs taste

[Copid]

As a friend of mine who lost a ton of weight says when anybody asks, "It's all just math." They start going into types of foods an this and that and he cuts them of. "Just math. The hard parts are knowing how many calories you need and actually knowing how many calories are in what you're eating. Once you've done that it's just a daily budget."

I think a lot of people seem to see diet drinks as negative calories instead of zero and it throws off their whole estimate. But the biggest problem is that they're eyeballing it and estimating how many calories they've eaten rather than really getting good numbers and keeping track. Study after study shows that people who estimate their calorie intake for the day are way off. You can't figure out calorie intake by using how guilty you feel about the whole pacakge as your metric.

Re:danger vs taste

[Copid]

I've converted over to diet for the same reason. I used to hate diet soda as a kid, but as I've gotten older the slightly lighter finish without the lingering sugar glaze in my mouth is something I prefer. I drink soda rarely enough that it wouldn't matter from a calorie count perspective.

The Diet Coke / Mentos guys said that after much research on which sodas produced the best fountain for the dollar, they went with the diet version for the easy cleanup because the regular stuff left a lot more residue.

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

No, it doesn't break down in the stomach. It breaks down in the small intestine. Very, very rapidly, leaving no detectable levels in the blood,.

The most recent study I read was in 2008 or so (and yes, I read the entire thing)

You read one study among the hundreds on one of the most highly studied food additives in history? Great, let me know when you're done with the others. ;) And I'm sure there was zero selection bias in your choice of which of the many studies to read ;)

Wikipedia covers the "cancer" thing well enough for a primer:

Reviews have found no association between aspartame and cancer. These reviews have looked at numerous carcinogenicity studies in animals, epidemiologic studies in humans, as well as in vitro genotoxicity studies. These studies have found no significant evidence that aspartame causes cancer in animals, damages the genome, or causes cancer in humans at doses currently used.[8][38][41] This position is supported by multiple regulatory agencies like the FDA[58] and EFSA as well as scientific bodies such as the National Cancer Institute.[47]

Concern about possible carcinogenic properties of aspartame was originally raised and popularized in the mainstream media by John Olney in the 1970s and again in 1996 by suggesting that aspartame may be related to brain tumors. Reviews have found that these concerns were flawed, due to reliance on the ecological fallacy[59] and the purported mechanism of causing tumors being unlikely to actually cause cancer. Independent agencies such as the FDA and National Cancer Institute have reanalyzed multiple studies based on these worries and found no association between aspartame and brain cancer.[41]

As discussed in the article on controversies around aspartame, the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center of the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences released several studies which claimed that aspartame can increase several malignancies in rodents, concluding that aspartame is a potential carcinogen at normal dietary doses.[60][61] The EFSA[62] and the FDA[58] discounted the study results due to lack of transparency and numerous flaws in the study, finding no reason to revise their previously established acceptable daily intake levels for aspartame.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

and i see fat people drinking it all the time so it doesn't seem to be working

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

AH fat bashing! The most socially acceptable form of bullying. WELL FUCK YOU. Fat people aren't just gluttons. It has never been that simple. It will never be that simple. You however are a fucking simpleton. If the body didn't regulate weight the difference between being hella fat and starving to death would be a single morsel of food per day. Watch and learn unless you are intent on remaining an asshole:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAQr77QMJiw

Re:danger vs taste

[lgw]

You seem to be arguing "it's doesn't matter what form the calories take" for weight loss, and many actually believe it's that simple. The "in" vs "out" is the final measure, sure, but the nature of the "in" matters a lot in practice.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

Nope, it is because diet soda makes you fat. It promotes the wrong kind of gut bacteria. The sweet taste also triggers insulin production, when causes hunger when the sugar that the tongue predicted doesn't show up in the stomach. So people end up eating even more to compensate. Sales of Diet Pepsi are falling because people are becoming more educated about just how unhealthy that crap is. If you are thirsty, try tap water.

BONK!

As a life long type 1 diabetic who is NOT fat and never has been.. your statement about "the sugar the tongue predicted" is completely wrong and I can attest to this by the fact that drinking diet soda is not correlated to insulin release of any kind with or without diabetes. That is simply not how it works.

Re:danger vs taste

[rogoshen1]

dude. if type 2 diabetes is caused by the pancreas burning out from having to overproduce insulin; and carbs have a 'glycemic load' (how much insulin is released in response to consumption) wouldn't be beyond fucking obvious that the composition of your carb intakes is very much a serious issue?

What you're saying is akin to: "Outside of specific risks of gunshot wounds to the head causing death, there is no 'right' balance to Russian Roulette having adverse effects on your health."

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

So you look at one product that contains stevia and draws some general conclusion from that?!?

No, I took a look at ALL the boxes that claimed to BE stevia. Not just supposed to contain it, but are supposed to be Stevia itself. Yes, when I looked at all the "Stevia" products on the shelves and saw that they all contain sugar as the main ingredient, I made a rash judgement that they all contained more sugar than stevia.

Just buy a product that doesn't contain a sugar instead.

Good idea. Sadly, there wasn't one. And the link I provided shows other products that, while sugar is not the main ingredient instead of stevia, have sugar alcohols instead.

Seems like the standard uninformed and skewed bullshit so common of sites like that,

Well, the information there is what I observed on the shelves of my local stores. I have yet to see a "stevia" that doesn't have something else as the main ingredient, and that something else is either sugar itself or a sugar alcohol (which drives my blood sugar levels just as nuts as pure sugar.)

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for. You are probably the same type of person that goes to gym and tells people they should just quit because they aren't lifting enough weight or only doing cardio. The fact is, they are doing something, which is more than some people do and should be encouraged.

Educate yourself. Calories in vs calories out does not stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever. The difference between starving to death and becoming obese would be a single morsel of food per day if it were that simple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAQr77QMJiw

Re:danger vs taste

[xaxa]

For comparison, Tesco give the RDA of carbohydrate and sugar: http://www.tesco.com/groceries...

330ml of Coca Cola contains:
* Carbohydrate 35g, 13% RDA
* of which sugars 35g, 39% RDA

Surprisingly, the can itself only shows the "sugars" value and RDA. (In Britain, the supermarkets are much better at promoting these values, since their store-branded products are usually better -- probably because they have more flexibility to change the recipe.)

Re:danger vs taste

[rogoshen1]

so what if in response to the decrease in calories, his body down-regulated expenditure? (less spontaneous activity, lower temperature, etc).

Bear in mind the sheer accuracy we'd need to maintain with consumption/intake to maintain weight over any length of time.

Re:danger vs taste

[metrix007]

No, you're just another crackpot wit not evidence to back up your claim.

The stuff is proven to be *harmless*.

We have an excess of data proving it.

Show *something* to negate any of that.

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

Here, you can prove me wrong right now in just a couple weeks.

Using a TARDIS or properly-equipped Delorean?

You realize that this "experiment" has been done again and again and time again, right?

"Strict calorie count" is nearly impossible, and "standard formula" calorie burn is just as hard to get right. Yes, the "experiment" has been done over and over, and the metabolism of the subject plays a significant role in the results.

There was a rousing ITV, or BBC, I don't remember, documentary on a woman who was a rabid anti-fat activist, spreading the word about how all it takes is eating less and how all the fatties are just lazy bastards who don't want to succeed. She spent some time gaining 30 pounds (I think it was) eating crap, then went on a low calorie diet AND exercised more, and she still couldn't get the weight off. And HER metabolism was based on being a runner prior to the test.

She even talked a couple of her "friends" into joining her "support group" and trying to lose weight, and while they did, it was clear they didn't lose as much as she wanted them to and they, too, were lazy bastards who must have been cheating. All I know is if she was a "friend", I'd not need enemies.

So no, it's not just "eat less", especially if your body goes into starvation mode and starts conserving energy for better times.

Re:danger vs taste

[elgatozorbas]

When I go to McDonalds, there's no pretense of nutrition or calorie reduction. I order a regular combo with a regular coke :) Diet drinks taste awful anyways.

Yeah, because more badness is better than less badness. And you think that people, who apparently cannot resist their urge to eat Big Macs, but somehow manage to at least drink diet coke instead of regular, are funny?

Re:danger vs taste

[xaxa]

Brands available in Britain (see here etc) list "maltodextrin". That's a polymer of 3-20 glucoses, and I'd guess at the higher end since only some of the mass is included in the "of which sugars" on the nutrition information.

Is that really much different than starch?

(The purpose is simply to dilute the über-sweet Stevia powder so you can use reasonable amounts.)

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight

I am overweight myself, but that there is a load of horseshit. "Diet anything" is the exact opposite of doing something to get healthier and lose weight. It's an expression of a want or need, but it's also as clear a sign as you can possibly give that you're not going to do anything to achieve it. Going from fatty to healthy takes some serious changes in one's lifestyle, and ordering diet proves that you're not willing to make those changes but instead want to keep on eating and drinking like you're used to, just not so many calories please. That doesn't work.

Good luck to you. You've been conned. Educate yourself. Calories in vs calories out does not stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever. The difference between starving to death and becoming obese would be a single morsel of food per day if it were that simple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAQr77QMJiw

Re:danger vs taste

[drinkypoo]

and i see fat people drinking it all the time so it doesn't seem to be working

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

I've always found it funny when people order like that. As if the diet pop is gonna counter the 2234872184732 calories of a double big mac you're about to wolf down. Not to mention the fries (which of course has been super sized!)

Have you ever actually looked up the numbers? In a Super Size (etc.) meal, the soda has more calories than any other single element, and they are all from sugar. Cutting it out might not make them svelte, but it's the single biggest improvement they can make in that "meal".

Anyway, the problem is that they're not just eating one meal. What got me to stop going to McDonald's was going in to get my one sausage biscuit with egg and cheese and standing in line behind a woman who was so fat she was having clearly audible breathing problems. She got the diet soda, too... and two McGriddles. Now I see her looming there, breathing louder and faster than Darth Vader, every time I think about eating at Mickey Deeznutz. Also there's the Pennywise/Ronald meme to keep the idea fresh. Mind you, I'm still pretty fat. I may be 6'7", but 275 is still fairly tubby. I only have so much room to talk... But then, I could have put on her sweatpants, she couldn't have got into my jeans.

Re: danger vs taste

[slasher999]

Reminds me of how I miss the original Tab. Give me my saccharine!

Re:danger vs taste

[drinkypoo]

The hard parts are knowing how many calories you need and actually knowing how many calories are in what you're eating. Once you've done that it's just a daily budget.

Well, no. You also have to know how many calories you're going to take away from what you ate, which is not just different for everyone, but which varies not just from food to food but also from different samples of same. The carb content of chicken is always nil but two different strawberries can be off from one another by a factor of 100% or more.

Re:danger vs taste

[drinkypoo]

Your body cannot "make" you eat something. You have a brain.

Which is part of your body.

The facts are facts: weight loss is a matter of calories in vs. calories out,

...but it's not calories into your mouth-hole, it's calories into your bloodstream. The ones that come out of your ass don't need to be counted. As they say, you're not what you eat, you are what you don't poop

Re:danger vs taste

[drinkypoo]

The fruit and other foods which make a tiny amount of methanol also make ethanol, which protects the body from the methanol which by the way turns into formaldehyde. So diet soda consumed with similar protection food should be fine, however it is open question if drinking alone would be fine.

So what you're saying is that it's okay to use it as a mixer? That's what I'll tell the cops when they catch me tipping up my flask. "Well, it's part of my weight loss program..."

Re:danger vs taste

[drinkypoo]

I forgot to mention though that saccharin is still dead in the market because it has a really strong aftertaste.

No, it's back, it just only shows up in specific places. For example, you can get sugar-free tonic water made with it. In that case, the quinine completely covers up the taste of the saccharin. For the same reason, I predict that stevia will enjoy widespread use in root beer and ginger ale, but not in lemon-lime soda or in cola. In the former cases, you can barely taste the leafy aftertaste. In the latter, it's all you can taste — at least, these are my experiences, and they jibe with those of my lady.

Re:danger vs taste

[drinkypoo]

We have alternatives, people! Tap water is good for us, good for the environment, stunningly cheap and tastes pretty good.

Time for you to google "tap water amoeba death"

Also, tap water is absolutely fucking horrible for the environment. Here's how it works: we take water out of waterways and process it with chemicals, then when you're done you flush it down the toilet and then we process it with some more chemicals. Very little of this is necessary; country-dwellers can crap in a hole and process their drinking water with a RO membrane, using the waste water for irrigation, or via distillation, while city-dwellers' effluent can be processed with ponds.

Re:danger vs taste

[drinkypoo]

Their advertising slogan may as well be "Pepsi - for when you can't afford actual Coca-Cola."

The only honest advertising slogan for Pepsi would be "Is Pepsi okay?" or perhaps "Pepsi is OK!" But that's pretty pathetic next to "Coke is It".

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. Diets work short term, i.e. if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight. That's obvious. It's physically inevitable. But if you think that you can cure the disease by treating the symptoms, which is what dieting is, then you're leading people into misery. Obesity is a secondary symptom. The primary symptom is overeating. You need to treat what's causing these symptoms in order to achieve lasting weight loss, because as long as the disease isn't cured, the symptoms return.

People overeat for a reason, and it's not that they're all weak-willed people who just don't give a damn. That one healthy person can subject their body to their whims, at least for some time, should not lead you to believe that an obese person can also "just stop eating". Yes, you have a brain that can in principle override every urge, craving and drive that you have. But for reasons that you continue to ignore, that feat is much harder to achieve with lasting success for some people than for others. These reasons can be physiological, psychological, sociological, economical and environmental. Without knowing and eliminating the cause of the overeating, dieting rarely results in permanent weight loss.

There may be the odd person who can maintain a moderate weight on a fast food diet if and only if the coke doesn't add to the calorie tab, but for most people, diet soda next to a Big Mac is at best an admission of guilt. It certainly isn't evidence of an actual attempt at eliminating the cause of their overeating.

Re:danger vs taste

[dixonpete]

>Diet soda is a miracle for Type I diabetics.

I'm not diabetic but I get by just fine drinking only water and peppermint tea.. That pop of your is just a habit you could break if you wanted to.

Re:danger vs taste

[kheldan]

Of course they're going from bad to worse if you ask me. I drink a soda with Sucralose in it? For the next 24 to 48 hours, I will be hungry CONSTANTLY, and no amount of food or drink will make it stop. Why can't they use something like Stevia, which has no side effects of any kind and is a plant extract, instead of some crap made in a chem lab?

Thanks so much Pepsi, you still aren't getting a penny from me for any your products, except the occasional Throwback Dr. Pepper.

Re:danger vs taste

[kheldan]

I'm curious, how do you explain the fact that Sucralose makes me ravenously hungry for at least 24 to 48 hours after ingesting it, and by 'ravenously' I mean no amount of food or drink will satisfy it, then?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Needs more smilie / winkie faces, you've managed to speak to the 12 year old Slashdot audience but you've ignored the 8 year olds.

More smilies and winkies!

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

(The purpose is simply to dilute the über-sweet Stevia powder so you can use reasonable amounts.)

Marketing Exec 1: Hey, we've got this great replacement for sugar called "stevia". It'll be a great seller because of all the people who don't want to use processed sugar or are on low carb diets!

Marketing Exec 2: Uhh, but it's so powerful that you only use a tiny bit. A one pound box would last for years. We can't make a profit on that.

Marketing Exec 1: Oh, yeah, I know, let's dilute it so that people have to put in more. Then a box will last only a month.

Marketing Exec 2: Great idea. What do we dilute it with that won't cut down the sweetness?

Marketing Exec 1: I know. Let's dilute it with sugar. It's FDA/EU approved, relatively cheap and is sweet, too.

Marketing Exec 2: But won't that be bad for the people who are buying our Stevia because they want no sugar or carbs?

Marketing Exec 1: Don't call it "sugar" and nobody will notice.

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

Just imagine how much cheaper everything would be if everyone was dixonpete and did only what dixonpete did and liked only the things dixonpete liked. The costs of stocking all those other items would go away and stores could concentrate on carrying only dixonpete-approved foods and clothes and stuff. Coffee plantations and soda makers would go out of business because nobody would drink coffee or soda anymore, but tea plantations and artificial peppermint flavor chemical plants would boom.

Yeah, just a "habit" that people like things other than water or peppermint tea.

I tried going caffeine free for a few weeks. I had to give it up because water and all the other caffeine-free drinks were just so pathetically boring or tasteless. The habit of caffeinated drinks wasn't hard to break, it was the habit of wanting something that tastes good was the killer.

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear. I used to work at a Mrs. Field's Cookies in a mall (don't hate; free food and drinks and spent all day win hot chicks), and we offered a "mall-sized soda" which was just the largest-sized soda for the smallest-sized price for anyone who actually worked in any store in the mall.

OMG just about every mall employee who came by would order the buy-3-get-one-free brownie deal and a mall-sized diet coke. Jesus. That's like 1500 calories of brownie but hey, it's a diet coke so it's all good, right?

Oh, man, so many fat women from the department stores with that order. They are probably all dead from diabeetus, now.

Re:danger vs taste

[netlag1]

The shitty test you're talking about didn't even *test* aspartame, it tested saccharine, which hasn't been in a diet drink for several decades. More shitty "science" that shitty newspapers can't bother to actually do 2.5 seconds of research on.

It tested aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. And it was well done and published in Nature, not somewhere you often find "shitty tests". Both these facts are in the linked article.

Re:danger vs taste

[aliquis]

But a double big mac has more nutrients than a soda at least ..

Even the french fries do.

Re:danger vs taste

[OdinOdin_]

You are still not getting it. The scientific claims can only be made for the substance used in the experiment. Since you have not verified the mechanism of action you can not be sure it is a blanket claim to anything that tastes sweet.

Since the claim is so interesting can you cite any other experiments over the past 8 years (since the papers date) to confirm the mechanism of action ? Surely someone would have tried it with many other sweet tasting substances since then ?

Taste buds may know more than you think (literally). As in your brains ability to detect sweet and sour in concious thought is one thing, but the taste buds might be able to detect a lot more than your concious thought is capable of discerning.

It is also very difficult to have a substance interact with taste buds and then remove 100% of the substance. One way maybe to evaporate it off the tongue with a blow torch? But still there maybe particles that won't evaporate, so how do you remove ?

Re:danger vs taste

[mjwx]

The shitty test you're talking about didn't even *test* aspartame, it tested saccharine, which hasn't been in a diet drink for several decades. More shitty "science" that shitty newspapers can't bother to actually do 2.5 seconds of research on. The last major saccharine based diet drink was Tab. Try ordering one today. You'll look like Marty McFly in 1955.

This.

Artificial sweeteners are recommended for diabetics because you dont process it, you pass it. Things like Aspartame, Xylitol and Stevia (I know Stevia is natural, but it's in the same class of sugar alternative) dont tend to increase the amount of sugar in your blood.

The reason a lot of people who drink died soft drinks dont appear to be losing weight is because they're eating wrong AND not exercising. Switching from sugary soft drinks to artificially sweetened soft drinks is a good thing as long as you're eating a healthy diet and getting a bit of exercise as it cuts out a huge source of sugar, but on it's own it will do nothing.

The thing that annoys me here is that I like the taste of Pepsi Max over Coke Zero, I hope they haven't ruined it thanks to some peoples irrational fear of something they dont understand.

Re:danger vs taste

[Whiteox]

Me too. I use it to sweeten coffee. The worst sweetener on the market that is gaining more foothold is Stevia. I avoid it. I'd rather eat grass.

Re:danger vs taste

[Whiteox]

Gotta be careful with that. It kills dogs if ingested.

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

Having a strict target is not impossible, and when the difference between consumption and expenditure is on the order of 500 calories, you have room for error on both ends - on your estimation of your consumption and on the estimation of your burn.

There was a rousing ITV, or BBC, I don't remember, documentary on a woman

Whoa - throw away all of the scientific data, there's an anecdote here involving an TV show about an uncontrolled experiment whose data we can't see and whose name you can't even remember!

The human body works on calories. The human digestive system does not throw away energy from digestible substances. It's energy in vs. energy out.

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

You are very funny, declaring the result of an experiment you haven't done and imagining you are right. That is not the scientific way. You are wrong about the helium balloon, put that balloon into a vacuum chamber and it will pop. My My you are so silly.

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

Where do you get the invalid notion that fat is bad?

Fat isn't making Americans fat, carbohydrates are.

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

Actually it's 3 percent of other polysaccharides in HFCS and they do bizarre things to gut bacteria and metabolism.

Stop with the nonsense that HFCS is just two common sugars, that's a approximate bulk description that no science minded person should use

Re:danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

not to mention those bacteria's poop is glycoproteins that help anchor them to teeth so that other bacteria, Streptococcus mutans can take up residence in the plaque and make lactic acid to dissolve the teeth.

Re:danger vs taste

[Whiteox]

Going from a giant to a normal height person requires precisely one thing: reducing the amount of calories in versus the amount of calories out. Nothing else. After all, the only way that a person becomes a giant is through consuming more calories than they expend (if you don't agree, you are denying the laws of thermodynamics), so logically reversing the thermodynamic balance should reverse the condition. Right?
If you have an equal 33% intake of sugars/starches, fat, protein compared to 100% sugar/starches then the body will absorb the food differently even though the calorific intake is the same.

All sugars/starches hydrolyzes into glucose. It is the only sugar that is used by the body.
Sucrose is hydrolyzed into glucose and fructose. Fructose eventually converts into glucose.
Starches converts to sugar(s) then to glucose.

The more complex starches ingested the harder the body has to work to consume it.
All excesses of any food (fats etc) are eliminated.
So it is the specific makeup of food that is more important that pure calorific value.
Anything that replaces starches and sugars is theoretically good for you e.g. fiber (vegetables), pure fats and protein.

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

I took a look at buying Stevia in the store awhile back. I am also a reader of contents labels, so I put it back on the shelf really fast. The first ingredient listed: dextrose

Boy you're a really clever one aren't you, catching onto secret calories in stevia that nobody else did?

First off, stevia is available in many different forms. Stevia is many times more potent than sugar in terms of sweetness, it's extremely hard to use pure (I have pure stevia - to use it pure you have to make very large batches and very tiny measurements!). To dilute it down you obviously have to mix it with something. There are all sorts of mixes, but there are two main categories: those that try for parity with sugar in terms of how much you use (which generally mix with maltodextrin), and those who try for a product that is much sweeter than sugar but not as extreme as pure stevia (these can come in a variety of forms, but a common blend is with dextrose). So yes, the dextrose has calories - but it's far outmatched in terms of sweetness by the stevia therein, so you only need to use a very small amount (depending on the ratio of the blend). The 1:1 parity versions as mentioned use maltodextrin, which is also caloric - but it's so light and fluffy that there's very little mass (and thus calories) per unit volume; basically, what the stevia is blended with is mostly air.

More fun facts about stevia here [100daysofrealfood.com].

Hahaha, Food Babe? Are you joking? The woman who says she hates air travel because they compress your bodies with high pressure air and it restricts your digestive organs? And how "the air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%. To pump a greater amount of oxygen in costs money in terms of fuel and the airlines know this!" Or her microwave rant, where she talks about how microwave ovens are evil because once water has been microwaved it no longer crystalizes into pure forms when frozen, but rather into forms similar to water that has heard words like "hitler" and "satan"? This is your information source?

Yeah, I think I'll stay over here in the real world and not get my information from a living joke, thanks.

Re:danger vs taste

[AthanasiusKircher]

They probably just like diet soda (me, don't like the syrupy throat coating feeling of the regular stuff)

THIS.

The whole discussion in this subthread seems to presuppose that everyone would obviously WANT to drink regular soda. But that's not a good assumption.

I rarely drink soda, but if I'm in a situation where it's the main drink being offered, I drink diet -- mainly because I can't stand the level of sweetness in normal soda. I've had many conversations with other people (both normal weight and obese) who feel the same way. "Regular" soda just tastes terrible to a lot of people, particularly if you don't like sweet things.

Diet soda also tastes really sweet, but somehow it's not as bad. AND you know that you're not ingesting hundreds of empty calories for a drink you detest.

I think it's what you're used to. I never grew up drinking a lot of soda. But I know people who grew up drinking loads of soda or syrupy iced tea, and they just love the stuff -- they think it's refreshing to have a cold Coke or iced tea loaded with multiple tablespoons of sugar per cup.

Me -- I can't stand the stuff. But once in a while, I do like the fizz in a drink. And since one can't typically order soda with a quarter of the normal sugar (which would be about the level I'd want), diet soda's really the only commonly available option.

Or, to put it another way, what is "worth the calories" to somebody? I don't like fast food -- most of it tastes horrible to me as well. If I want a burger, I want a REAL burger (I often grind my own meat fresh at home), not a processed calorie-bomb that has to have loads of sauce on it and flavor-enhancers to convince you to eat it.

Anyhow, to me it's "worth the calories" to have a homemade burger sometimes that might have the same calories as a Big Mac or whatever. To others, they might think it's "worth the calories" to eat the Big Mac, because they like the taste, but they might not like overly sweet sugary soda enough to make it "worth the calories."

Maybe there are some people out there who order diet soda even though they hate it, just to save calories. But I also bet there are a significant number of people who just don't really like regular soda that much. Frankly, I know very few adults beyond college age who do -- maybe it's just the people I hang out with, though.

Re:danger vs taste

[electrosoccertux]

actually, the one I read was headlined and championed as proof as as a cancer causing agent. I read the whole thing and realized '5%', completely moved on, for good.

and it doesn't break down in your small intestine, it passes right through. That's why you get diarrhea.

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously danger versus taste. You do understand , while you may profess to be a scientist..the rest of us are just Regular people. Hoping the world doesn't produce stuff that kills us and we are faced with so many condradictory views, all telling us it's scientific fact. We don't test rats, we all live in the real world and wait for you brilliant scientist to drive a bus over the marketing people and tell us the truth. I'm neither uneducated or niave. I a CEO , and have had it with the BS from doctors and conflicting scientific studies.,,But I have to tell you, I gave up diet soda ,,all processed food , high GI food , gluten and am just sticking to whole l organic foods. Not because I know exactly why..just because all my health issues are so difficult and NO one seems to enable to tell and agree me what's good and what's bad. My only vice is white wine..and I like it , so until some says with certainty it's killing me, well, it's all,of got left. By the way, my autoamine disease, arthritis , psoriasis, headaches, memory ..and so one..is 75% better since I've give up all those things and no scientist or doctor got me here, after years of searching for answers from them . Life is harder elinating these things I loved, especially diet Pepsi, wheat and sugar...but I'm finally healthier and confident in my decisions. And no longer believe a word from the scientific world of conflicting bs

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the sweeteners mentioned here Stevia is by far the most deadly. Walter White knew it and that Lydia chick should have known too!

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot accept advice about what to drink from someone who drinks poo, drinkypoo.

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

Boy you're a really clever one aren't you, catching onto secret calories in stevia that nobody else did?

Thank you, but I said nothing about calories. Did I? I don't see it anywhere. I commented that a sugar SUBSTITUTE actually has more sugar than substitute in it. I think that's fascinating. As someone who would buy stevia only to avoid the carbs, finding a mainline carb as the largest constituent of the sugar substitute was a bit, ummm, surprising.

So yes, the dextrose has calories - but it's far outmatched in terms of sweetness by the stevia therein, so you only need to use a very small amount (depending on the ratio of the blend).

In the US, the FDA content reporting laws say that the ingredients must be listed in order. That means "most first". (That's why it isn't Kraft "Cheese and Macaroni", because there's more macaroni than cheese.) By listing dextrose first that means there is more dextrose than stevia. It doesn't need to be there AT ALL if the stevia is so good a sweetener. They could use something else that wasn't a digestable carb instead.

It's like selling an "alcohol-free beer" that has had its alcohol replaced by ... alcohol. Or a "30% less sodium salt" that has fluffed-up salt instead of normal crystals, so each tsp has 30% less salt, and you use 30% more to get the same taste. Yes, the package was 30% lighter, and cost 30% more.

basically, what the stevia is blended with is mostly air.

No, it would seem that it is mostly dextrose, according to the FDA mandated labels. I don't believe they have to list air.

Hahaha, Food Babe? Are you joking?

No. I pointed you at her site because she had the pictures of the labels that I did not. I was talking about ingredients in Stevia products; she has the documentation. What's the problem?

Or her microwave rant,

Right. Ok. Whatever. I don't think I told you to believe everything she's ever said, did I?

Yeah, I think I'll stay over here in the real world and not get my information from a living joke, thanks.

I got my information from the federally mandated food content labels, which is about as "real world" as it needs to be. Sorry I upset you so much and confused you about the calorie issue, which you brought up, not me. And how most of stevia is air -- well, if you shake the box, I suppose so, but there's still more sugar in stevia than stevia. Do you see nothing at all odd about that? Is it ethical marketing to sell a sugar substitute that has more sugar than it needs? I don't think so, but I only live in the real world and not the world of xkcd.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god. I still have nightmares about the time I bought a sugar-free chocolate cream pie (made with mannitol) from Walmart & ate about half of it over the course of the day. The stomach cramps were so bad, I almost slept on the toilet that night.

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

From the incoherence of that sentence, I would believe that you have, indeed, ingested a tab of LSD. For science, of course.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, they're making the variant formerly known as Pepsi ONE (with AceK & Splenda) the official new Diet Pepsi. Awesome!!!!

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

Whoa - throw away all of the scientific data, there's an anecdote here involving an TV show about an uncontrolled experiment whose data we can't see and whose name you can't even remember!

This is slashdot. It's filled with anecdotal evidence. This is no worse than any of the "evidence" from people who tell their personal tales that you accept that supports your position. This one doesn't.

I find it humorous that you are ranting about me for "anecdotal evidence" when you just challenged someone to "prove me wrong right now in just a couple weeks" by using the same kind of evidence. I guess they can't prove you wrong because they can't do the rigorous scientific studies that you rely on for your information, either "right now" or "in just a couple weeks".

The human digestive system does not throw away energy from digestible substances.

Uhhh, yeah, it can. Maybe there's more to this than you know? Ok, the digestive system may not, but the excretory system can.

It's energy in vs. energy out.

It is this simplistic view of the system that leads to vitriolic statements about those "fat bastards" who just need "to eat less". For your reference, here is just one link to the hatemonger who tried to prove how easy it was to lose weight and failed. Not even her friends could meet her goals for them and she was riding them pretty hard.

Yes, some evidence is anecdotal. But if something doesn't work for someone that might mean that the science that says it is supposed to might be wrong or incomplete. I think there's enough variance in humans that no single answer will be correct. That's why drugs come with side-effect warnings -- different people will react to different things differently. ACE inhibitors make me cough. They don't make everyone cough. I can switch into ketosis in a couple of days while it takes some people a week or more.

It is lunacy to proclaim one answer fits all for all humankind.

Re:danger vs taste

[ToasterMonkey]

and i see fat people drinking it all the time so it doesn't seem to be working

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

I've always found it funny when people order like that. As if the diet pop is gonna counter the 2234872184732 calories of a double big mac you're about to wolf down. Not to mention the fries (which of course has been super sized!)

When I go to McDonalds, there's no pretense of nutrition or calorie reduction. I order a regular combo with a regular coke :) Diet drinks taste awful anyways.

Soda is not a small part of the picture, it can be a LOT of calories over a day, or even in one meal.
Here's your medium combo, all from here, http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com...

50% 530 Big Mac
32% 340 Medium Fries
18% 200 Medium Coke ... the first one ...
I don't care if you only drink the first one, I'm not drinking four liquid chicken McNuggets each cup and don't worry about it.

So you don't like the taste of diet, I get that, but don't let it fool you into thinking soda is an insignificant source of calories or not worth cutting.
If that McDonalds is bad, your 21 oz of Coke is STILL 200 empty calories when you drink it with a 300 calorie salad.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution most of the fatties seem to be gravitating towards is the ultimate in lazy indulgence: gastric bypass surgery. That's right folks! You are so weak minded that you can't control your eating so we're going to make it physically impossible for you to eat. Sounds good right? I guess it doesn't work that well though. I know two women who got that surgery done and they were thin for about 2 years. Now they're right back to 300lbs and just can't figure out why!

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone eating a double big mac combo with a diet pop is not trying. :) Just my opinion.

Once you stop drinking sugar, you don't really go back, even when eating a burger and fries. I think people get hung up on "diet", it's just sugar free.
Is subbing fries with a side salad weird too? It does all add up.

Re: danger vs taste

[BlueTrin]

Are you saying that people didn't deduce gravity from experimentation on various substances/materials ?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for. You are probably the same type of person that goes to gym and tells people they should just quit because they aren't lifting enough weight or only doing cardio. The fact is, they are doing something, which is more than some people do and should be encouraged.

Oh please, one of the most common forms of self-delusion is to focus on one little thing you do that is contrary to your usual behavior or line you won't cross making you not such a bad guy after all. Like focusing on that your bacon-cheese, greasy meat and white bread tower drenched in dressing with lots of oil-soaked fries has a leaf of lettuce and a slice of tomato too. And you ordered a Diet Coke, it's not that unhealthy right? I guess some of them are honest with themselves, it's still a calorie monster just without the final topping. But I'm guessing a lot more are lying to themselves, I know I've been prone to do so.

Holy christ on crackers man, you can give up sugary drinks without giving up ALL high calorie meals. It's a taste thing after a while, sugar has an after taste and coats your teeth with fuzzy feeling stuff. I'm not going to switch back to regular coke with my McNasty & fries because I'm worried what some douche thinks about it.

Re: danger vs taste

[BlueTrin]

As opposed to carbs you find in rice and vegetables for example ?

Re: danger vs taste

[BlueTrin]

Being fat or not fat is not equivalent to being healthy.

Re: danger vs taste

[BlueTrin]

And could be continue this diet for the rest of his life, you miss the bigger picture. Your long term weight is something you have to sustain by a long term change in diet, crashing a few kgs does not help if you can't avoid regaining the weight.

Re: danger vs taste

[BlueTrin]

No you are still misunderstanding: if your goal is only weight loss it is only in vs out and you are wrong. Only if you want to be healthy or want to look good you start to look at what you eat. Eating less than you spend will always make you lose weight but maybe you will lose a lot of muscle as well.

Re:danger vs taste

[QRDeNameland]

Aside from the very valid points others have raised...

Of course you can lose some weight in the short term by gaming energy balance. And the reason said experiment has been done "again and again and time again" is because in the long term, you will need to consistently cut more and/or burn more to keep losing the same amount of weight, and in 95% or more of cases you will be unable to keep that up, and eventually will gain that weight back and likely more.

The person who suffers giganticism will also lose weight with such a strategy. But no one would suggest that restricting intake or increasing expenditure will *cure* giganticism, or that too much expenditure *caused* it...we recognize that it is a hormonal problem that cause a person to grow abnormally. Even though thermodynamics apply as surely as it does with obesity (and indeed you can stunt developmental growth through starvation), they is not the primary or even really a particularly relevant factor.

Now that doesn't mean that obesity isn't caused by simple caloric excess, but it does prove that thermodynamics do not make it necessarily so. In fact, the only way one would be justified in claiming such a thing was if you could (a) prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no similar biological disruption involved in common obesity, or (b) show clinical results where simply trying to create negative energy balance via caloric restriction and increased exertion (aka standard diet and exercise advice) reliably reverses obesity over the long term. There is far too much evidence otherwise to claim (a), and the only way you can justify (b) is through the the standard rationalization practiced by the medical community today..."it's not true that our standard prescription of diet/exercise is 95+% ineffective, it's 100% effective but there's a 95+% non-compliance rate." Of course it's a tautology, the only indicator of 'compliance' is success...and you easily could substitute 'prayer' for 'diet/exercise' and it would be just as true. (You didn't lose weight, obviously you're not praying hard enough, fatty!)

So does the fact that you can temporarily shed some weight by effectively starving yourself via diet or exertion justify your initial claim that simple control of caloric balance (whatever that even means in the real world) is the "precisely one thing...nothing else" that a fatty needs to know to be a former fatty? It may be the conventional wisdom, but, to use the vernacular, it's fucking retarded.

Re: danger vs taste

[AvitarX]

You're assuming they taste the same, they don't.

I don't know how it effects things, and I have read that there are longer term effects of body response to regularly receiving artificial sweeteners, but I can readily process the taste difference, I have no reason to assume I cannot subconsciously too. I'm not reading the study, just pointing out that to really demonstrate what you're stating, it'd definitely need to use fake sweeteners.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah, the same amount that is in over 300 cans of pop a day. And it still didn't actually give the mice cancer. If you drank that much today, guess what you'd die of: Water poisoning."

Challenge accepted!

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, what sort of person who's not prone (for whatever reasons) to weight gain is suddenly going to decide, "You know, I want to switch from normal pepsi to diet."?

I did (Well, to Pepsi MAX). After just one can of regular Pepsi, I had this icky layer covering my teeth, which stayed there until I brushed my teeth which wasn't until I got home from work). The sugar free stuff doesn't leave that layer.

But I also didn't notice any difference in weight neither when I started drinking the sugar version, or when I switched to sugar free.

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

find it humorous that you are ranting about me for "anecdotal evidence" when you just challenged someone to "prove me wrong right now in just a couple weeks" by using the same kind of evidence.

Surely you'll admit that "I experienced it myself" is better than "some TV 'documentary' whose name I don't remember had some woman who claimed it"

The human digestive system does not throw away energy from digestible substances.

Uhhh, yeah, it can. Maybe there's more to this than you know? Ok, the digestive system may not, but the excretory system can.

Link

The interior surface of the small intestine is composed of microvilli that dramatically enlarge its absorptive surface, accounting for an extraordinary efficiency in absorbing consumed substrates: 98% of all digestible carbohydrate is absorbed; 95% of all fat is absorbed; and 92% of all protein is absorbed.

That's the baseline. How much more efficient exactly do you think your particular digestive system is than 98% of carbs, 95% of fat and 92% of protein?

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

I just gave you a link to a peer-reviewed study which studied its breakdown components in the bloodstream and you're still claiming otherwise? Tsk tsk. And to help you out with what you're confusing, you're mixing up aspartame with olestra. Olestra is the food additive that doesn't break down in the small intestine, passes through, and if eaten in excess causes loose stools or related problems. The quantities of olestra used, since it's a substitute to fats, are significant. The quantities of aspartame used are far too small to have such an effect even if they didn't break down rapidly in the intestines (which has been amply documented that they do).

Re:danger vs taste

[Rei]

Thank you, but I said nothing about calories. Did I? I don't see it anywhere. I commented that a sugar SUBSTITUTE actually has more sugar than substitute in it.

By mass only, but thats a complete red herring since you use far less of it than you would of actual sugar.

Nobody is ever going to make a mass-market pure Stevia product because it's way too hard to use - it's just way too concentrated of a sweetener. Trust me, I've used it, I usually have to resort to weighting it out on a jewler's scale. It's silly to point out small amounts of sugar filler; for a given amount of sweetness you'll never consume a significant amount.

They could use something else that wasn't a digestable carb instead.

No, people like you and "food babe" would freak out at the names of indigestible carbs far worse than you do with dextrose. And dextrose won't alter the texture or flavor of the food product like many indigestible carbohydrates such as resistant starches would.

I was talking about ingredients in Stevia products; she has the documentation.

She has a page full of claims, half of which are laughable BS that she just made up, as is her typical modus operandi.

Right. Ok. Whatever. I don't think I told you to believe everything she's ever said, did I?

You're the one who linked to a running joke, its your problem.

Re:danger vs taste

[tehcyder]

If you are thirsty, try tap water.

Or, if you're not a child, beer.

Re:danger vs taste

[kaizendojo]

Where did *you* get that conclusion from what I said? Please re-read before commenting.

Re:danger vs taste

[tehcyder]

Drinking 119+ litres of _water_ every day is going to have negative effects

On the plus side, you'll be dead so you won't notice them.

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, everything is relative. All the other drinks being listed here start as tap water, so tap water is the baseline for contamination.

Also, nearly every waste water treatment plant I am aware of uses bacterial action in containment ponds as its primary decontamination method. Chemically cleaning that much volume would be exorbitantly expensive. Chemistry is involved on the back end but most of the action is biological.

Re:danger vs taste

[tehcyder]

I find the consistency regular soda to be unpleasantly syrupy.

Drinks like normal coke and pepsi have one function only: to make you feel slightly better when you're hungover. Some sugar and liquid for when you can't face eating anything, but still have to get up and go to work. Otherwise, I just don't see the point.

And "diet" drinks baffle me entirely. If you want a tasteless cold drink, ask for a glass of water.

Re:danger vs taste

[tehcyder]

I go to McDonalds somewhat often, and typically I order a spicy chicken sandwich off of the dollar menu with instructions to go light on the mayo (otherwise they glob it on there) and add mustard and a slice of tomato and a small fry with no salt.

I don't think you can customise your orders at McDonalds here in the UK, although I am not prepared to test this out, as it would involve going into a McDonalds sober.

Re:danger vs taste

[tehcyder]

Why do I get the impression that eating your daily quota of McDonalds in the US is some sort of legal requirement?

No one I know who has ever tried to lose weight would go into a fast food shop in the first place. It's like an alcoholic not visiting pubs.

Saving a couple of hundred calories by having a revolting-tasting diet drink instead of a slightly-less-revolting tasting normal drink seems beside the point to me.

Just don't have the shit-burger and shit-fries to start with.

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a brain MRI some years ago and I asked my neurologist if my optic nerve had any signs of damage of demyelination.

Nothing. And I've been drinking the equivalent of 10 packets of aspartame sweetener a day.

It seems pretty harmless to me.

Re:danger vs taste

[Baldrake]

A 20 oz coke has 240 calories. Drink one every day, and you’ve consumed 1,680 calories over a week. If those are surplus calories, that is enough to gain about half a pound a week, or about 25 pounds over a year. If you're over-eating in other parts of your meal, you have more reason to hold back on the sugar-sweetened beverages, not less.

Of course I think we can all agree that it's better to be drinking water. But people are allowed some pleasure in life.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, a big mac is (only) 467 calories. That's less than 1/4th of what myfitnesspal says I should eat a day to lose weight, and that's not counting exercise (I don't actually use that, or any diet app... signed up a while back just to see what it'd say). Add in a small fry (229cl) and it's still less than 1/3rd.

What bothers me most about the calorie in = calories out mantra are the assumptions and judging that go along with it. It's WAAAY harder to lose weight and keep it off than it is to maintain your weight. Maintaining your weight, regardless of how much you weigh, is when your body *should* be sending the happy signals (or at least content).

This "drinking diet soda while sitting in front of a single meal that still represent ~75% of their daily recommended calorie intake" crap is in the same vein. Maybe 696 calories is 3/4ths of YOUR recommended caloric intake (which I doubt, but it's probably close), but that's not what it is for the large folks you are referring to. This is also part of the preconception issue...

* if your regular diet is about 1400 calories
* and you go over by 20%
* that's 280 extra calories

* if big guy's diet is 2300 calories
* and he goes over by 20%
* that's 460 extra calories

IMO, that 20% is going to feel like 20% for each respective person.
However, it's going to be nearly twice as much work to burn the 460 extra rather than the 280 extra.
Basically, the extras shouldn't be judged by percentages, but that's unfortunately the way our minds see it (in relation to the plate sitting in front of us, not as a raw number).

Re:danger vs taste

[geminidomino]

In my experience, they ALL have a strong, nasty aftertaste. Even sucralose ("Splenda", e.g.) which people still flog as "almost actual sugar" has a bitterness that I can identify after one sip. Most of the time, I can even catch it if it's been used in cooking - I don't know if I'm just sensitive to it or what, but it's bad enough that I opted to learn to take my coffee without sweetener rather than add that junk.

Re:danger vs taste

[geminidomino]

Going from fatty to not fatty requires precisely one thing: reducing the amount of calories in versus the amount of calories out.

Until someone develops a convenient cybernetic gauge that someone can plug into his neck and see how much energy is being used, I really wish people would stop spouting this canard like it's actually that simple.

The BMR calculation is just like the BMI calculation: it was developed as a function on aggregate data, and can be (very very very) inaccurate to apply to an individual person.

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe what you say, then put a known poison on your tounge but don't swallow. If you don't swallow, you'll be safe, right?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

But you'll believe the studies that tell you artificial sweeteners are healthy, because their producers have no economic interests and much higher ethics?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, it DOES trigger an insulin reaction.

The easy first step is to stop consuming artificial shit. There's plenty of carbonated water, and you can add a squirt of lemon or lime. After a few weeks, I preferred them to sodas. And I don't have any kind of metabolic illness. I just decided to stop consuming over-processed shit.

Except bacon. Because bacon.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

and i see fat people drinking it all the time so it doesn't seem to be working

What aspartame does is increase your appetite. Because the sweetness is empty, your body craves for calories, ergo, you end up hungry and end up eating larger portions.
About 6 months ago, we reverted to only consuming non diet soda pop at a meal, if at all. We drink much less pop than before (because we think about the sugar), but I also noticed that we were less hungry and that we were happy with smaller food portions. Wow, I can now appreciate the 2 oz hamburger we get at the fast food places (They are not, they are not restaurants).

Re:danger vs taste

[beastofburdon]

This should be insightful instead of funny.
Fake sugars do increase obesity by fucking up our body's ability to count calories.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget how many you excrete.

Re:danger vs taste

[Andy Dodd]

One thing to keep in mind is:

Standalone products sold for use as a human-usable sweetener are going to be different than industrial uses.

The majority of artificial sweeteners happen to be significantly more potent by weight than normal sugar. As a result, nearly all of them are mixed with some sort of filler (usually dextrose in my experience) when sold as a "table sweetener". This is to allow the consumer to have any hope whatsoever of measuring them out in a consistent manner. Even with the fillers, they're significantly reduced in calories compared to sugar.

Splenda, Stevia, NutraSweet, they're all mixed with fillers when sold as a consumer-usable sweetener. These fillers aren't present in "industrially-produced" products that don't need the fillers, like soda off the shelf.

As another example - aspartame has as many calories per unit of weight as sucrose. However, it's 200 times sweeter than sucrose, so the amount used is so little that the caloric content of a product with the same sweetness is negligible. Think of a 12 ounce can of Coke - normally 33g of sugar, but only requires 0.16 grams of aspartame. For Coke, this isn't a problem sine they mix hundreds if not thousands of liters at a time, so the amount of aspartame used is easier to measure out - but imagine trying to measure out 0.16 grams of aspartame as a user!

Re:danger vs taste

[Andy Dodd]

Which makes me wonder - is the real reason Pepsi is doing this neotame?

Neotame is, I believe, about as expensive per unit volume as aspartame to produce, BUT it requires far less volume as it's 7-10 THOUSAND times sweeter than sucrose instead of 200 times in the case of aspartame.

The patent for neotame expires on July 8 of this year - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

So could this actually just be a cost-cutting measure that they're trying to market as "being good for you"?

Re:danger vs taste

[Methadras]

The concentrations are so small as to be ineffective to the outcome you predict.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct. The reason it didn't affect the mice in the previously mentioned study is that animals have a different metabolic response to methanol than humans. In humans every molecule of aspartame turns into a molecule of methanol.*(pg13) The first step in digestion of methanol is that it is always metabolized into very reactive (and among other things, cancer causing) formaldehyde. *(pg17)

*Woodrow C Monte, PhD wrote about this in his book "While Science Sleeps- A Sweetner Kills" ISBN 9781 452893679

Re:danger vs taste

[mynameiskhan]

"The sweet taste also triggers insulin production" You mean insulin production is Pavlovian? That ought to be an award winning theory...

Re: danger vs taste

[lgw]

It's just semantics, I think. If you want to lose weight, the kind of food you eat will determine your likely success in that endeavor, because it will affect both the amount of calories your body burns, and the difficulty of sticking to your diet. Saying "it's just in vs out" oversimplifies to the point of misleading.

Re:danger vs taste

[tweak13]

Sorry, but rubycodez is 100% right here. You can not take a single study of limited substances on a single species and claim that it applies to every sweet tasting thing in humans. We have no clue by what mechanism that insulin response is triggered. They may have a good theory, but we won't know until extensive testing is done. That's the way science works. A single study may be interesting, but proof it most certainly is not.

Re:danger vs taste

[MisterToad]

We are conditioned (brain washed) into thinking that everything must be sweet. Apparently the reason people don't simply drink water is that it is not sweet. It seems to be affecting our language - people, especially young people, equate "sweet" with "good". I saw a teenager putting sugar on his salad the other day!!

Re:danger vs taste

[Ol Olsoc]

Dangerous smangerous. I don't drink diet because it tastes terrible.

The irony of that is that cola drinks taste like carbonated battery acid, regardless of what sweetens them.

Re:danger vs taste

[Ol Olsoc]

Fountain Diet Coke still contains Saccharin (Or at least it did the last time I got a box of syrup), which is why it tastes better.

Aspartame has a limited lifetime in liquid. Occasionally an outdated can of cola gets out. But for the syrup, which is essentially non biodegradable, you can keep that shit for centuries.

Re:danger vs taste

[Ol Olsoc]

No, you leave out important thing found in fruit juice not found in diet soda. The fruit and other foods which make a tiny amount of methanol also make ethanol, which protects the body from the methanol which by the way turns into formaldehyde.

Don't forget that fruits have nitrates, which create nitrites, which we all know is supporsed to be bad for you.

Seems like life is dangerous and will kill you.

Re:danger vs taste

[Ol Olsoc]

Tomato juice breaks down into more methanol than your soda.

Aspartame doesn't cause methanol poisoning.

Aspartame doesn't create nitrites either, like that good for you tomato juice and it's nitrates do.

I'm not planning on cutting back on the number of Bloody May's or Ceasers I drink however, I understand the vodka in it protects me from that.

Re:danger vs taste

[Obfuscant]

By mass only, but thats a complete red herring since you use far less of it than you would of actual sugar.

When commenting that a product that is supposed to be a sugar substitute has more sugar than substitute, it is certainly not a red herring to say that. You are assuming a meaning that wasn't there. You brought up calories, not I.

Nobody is ever going to make a mass-market pure Stevia product because it's way too hard to use - it's just way too concentrated of a sweetener.

THERE'S the red herring in the box. So they have to dilute it with sugar? No, I don't think so.

It's silly to point out small amounts of sugar filler;

You simply don't understand the concept of product labels and the order of ingredients listed on them, do you? It's not a small amount of sugar, SUGAR IS THE LARGEST COMPONENT. If, as you say, stevia is so powerful that you'd have to use a "jewler's scale" to measure the correct amount, and stevia is SECOND on the list, that means that every tsp of the stevia product is by a huge majority sugar. That's not "a small amount".

No, people like you and "food babe" would freak out at the names of indigestible carbs

Where have you seen me "freak out" at these ingredients? Stop being insulting when you can't be convincing or correct.

She has a page full of claims,

More important, she had images of the labels I was talking about. That's why I linked to it. Sorry you got distracted by the microwave stuff, which I didn't see there, but obviously you did.

You're the one who linked to a running joke, its your problem.

Yeah, when you can't dispute the truth, resort to ad hominem.

Re:danger vs taste

[Vastad]

All that said, when I lived in Seattle there was something that was actually done right by the main fast food franchises there (not sure if it's the same across all of the US) that is not offered anywhere in Europe. You actually provided an unsweetened alternative that had a flavour: Unsweetened Ice Tea.

That was awesome!
You know what they offer in the UK? Normal coke, diet coke, over-priced "mineral" water and the happy meal 150ml milk. Oh and coffee or calorie-rich milkshake if you paid extra. What a farce.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't drink diet soda because I don't drink soda...

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspartame makes my joints ache too. I discovered it about 10 years, it was so bad I was taking over 1000mg of advil and other pain meds. Once I switched to diet soda with splenda/sucralose the pains slowly went away. Now a days I drink mostly water and have been pain free except when I accidentally consume anything with aspartame in it. In reality I think I just hit my lifetime limit of the stuff. I used to drink about 96oz or more of it every single day for years.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

that is acesulfame and it is in coke zero, pepsi max. They still use it. acesulfame and saccharine are almost the same. 2.5 seconds of reasearch

Re:danger vs taste

[electrosoccertux]

oh, didn't read that far.

still, if it took that much to cause cancer in mice...?

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

And, you're basically, thee man.

Re:danger vs taste

[Saffaya]

I've heard from medics that in some cases of severe alcool intoxication (drunkards), they would give a definite dose of methanol to the patient.
Apparently, the human body deals much better with both metanol and ethanol than when only one of the two.
I suppose doctors could give us a more detailed explanation.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that the thouroughly debunked cancer study on Aspartame fed the mice the equivalent of 14 *cases* of pop every single day?

...so you're saying i should cut down on diet soda?

Re:danger vs taste

[rmdingler]

In my experience, they ALL have a strong, nasty aftertaste. Even sucralose ("Splenda", e.g.) which people still flog as "almost actual sugar" has a bitterness that I can identify after one sip. Most of the time, I can even catch it if it's been used in cooking - I don't know if I'm just sensitive to it or what, but it's bad enough that I opted to learn to take my coffee without sweetener rather than add that junk.

I feel the same way about the city water: there's a chlorine taste/smell that even the RO system cannot remove.

I have gone the black coffee route myself, and now prefer it only that way.

I cannot, however, give up the coke in my whiskey... sacrilegious, right? I use some Diet, and actually prefer the Pepsi throwback non-HFCS blend.

There seem to be plausible arguments for health issues on both sides.. what are some decent alternatives to soda if one must have a mixer??

Re:danger vs taste

[stoatwblr]

Aspartamine has been linked to methanol poisoning under some very specific circumstances:

1: Victim regularly drank a _lot_ of diet cola (as in 4-6 litres/day or more)
2: Loading dock practices at the supply chain leading to the victim resulted in bottles of diet cola being left in direct sunlight for prolonged periods and then in a hot warehouse environment exceeding 40C (This was texas, it gets hot there in summer and that's also the reason for the high cola consumption)

Under those circumstances enough aspartamine broke down _in the bottle_ that the victim suffered serious health problems due to chronic methanol exposure.

Once the source was recognised, she stopped drinking diet cola (switched to water and tea) and health returned to more-or-less normal (there are some long term effects) within a few months.

As I said, this is very specific circumstance. There are very few extreme consumption examples like this and as I understand it handling procedures have been changed to try and prevent repeats.

Re:danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I just drink my coffee black

Re: danger vs taste

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got that nearly right. Ethanol is administered for methanol poisoning.

From Medscape: Antidote therapy, often using ethanol or fomepizole, is directed towards delaying methanol metabolism until the methanol is eliminated from the patientâ(TM)s system either naturally or via dialysis. Like methanol, ethanol is metabolized by ADH, but the enzymeâ(TM)s affinity for ethanol is 10-20 times higher than it is for methanol. Fomepizole is also metabolized by ADH; however, its use is limited because of high cost and lack of availability.

Re:danger vs taste

[beelsebob]

I don't care to, because I've not performed a scientific study into your anecdote.

My hypothesis would be on the placebo effect though.

Re: danger vs taste

[rubycodez]

Switch to red wine, even more beneficial things in that as long as in moderation.

Re:danger vs taste

[untaken_name]

Depends on what the balloon is made out of, now doesn't it? Where is the video of you performing this experiment, btw? Pics or it didn't happen.

Since when

[justthinkit]

Since when is Sucralose better than Aspartame?

Re:Since when

[Monkk]

I have no idea if Sucralose is any safer ... but I know that I am one of the lucky few who gets to enjoy an adverse reaction to aspartame.  From a purely anecdotal view, if I drink diet drinks with aspartame regularly, after a few days to a week I start to lose my balance and just generally feel run down.  Sucralose has not produced any negative effects for me as yet.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is Sucralose better than Aspartame?

Flavor-wise, since day one.

Re:Since when

[slashmydots]

You need less of it because it's WAY sweeter, it's more heat stable at high temperatures, and it's cheaper.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is Sucralose better than Aspartame?

Is that the point? Because, marketing!

Re:Since when

[Mal-2]

Since when is Sucralose better than Aspartame?

Ask someone with phenylketonuria. I once went to a restaurant with a group, one of whom has this disorder. When he ordered a drink, he specifically said "NOT diet, I can't have phenylalanine". They brought him Diet Coke. He drank enough that some time (maybe twenty minutes) later, he had a freak-out and would have gotten all of us tossed out if he hadn't had enough sense to explain to us what he thought was about to happen. The restaurant quickly reversed tack to make sure they weren't going to get sued, while one of the people in the group had to drive him to a hospital to make sure he'd be OK.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Pepsi should also advertise "Contains No Radioactive Nuclear Waste".

It would be true, and just as meaningful as "No Aspartame".

Re:Since when

[Minwee]

Pepsi should also advertise "Contains No Radioactive Nuclear Waste".

No... they shouldn't

I'm afraid that I'm bound by too many non-disclosure agreements to explain why, but legally speaking that wouldn't be a good idea for them.

Re:Since when

[Applehu Akbar]

And furthermore, it causes Courier font.

Re:Since when

[operagost]

Do you mean your question to be, "how is sucralose better than aspartame?"

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent +6 Funny. Or is that Informative?

Re:Since when

[Shadow IT Ninja]

I would not choose Sucralose over Aspartame. It's much less tested than aspartame. The other thing is that Sucralose is just sucrose with some of the hydroxyl groups replaced by chlorine. General experience with organic chlorine is that it tends to be dangerous and often cancer causing. The manufacturers showed that Sucralose is not absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract and that greatly helped it's approval. However, it seems to me that it doesn't have to be absorbed in order to cause trouble right there in the gastrointestinal tract, such as colon cancer.

The one sweetener that may be as good or better than Aspartame is Stevia now that it's approved as an artificial sweetener. It has been used in many other countries for many years. Here in the US, it was previously marketed as a nutritional suppliement and I did not trust it as such. The fact that a non-nutritive sweener could have ever been classified as a nutritional suppliment shows how rediculous the law is.

Re:Since when

[Tablizer]

If you think that's bad, sugar causes a WingDing font.

Re:Since when

[GrumpySteen]

Beets cause me to vomit and have dry heaves for about half an hour. My individual evidence clearly shows that beets are horribly toxic and should be removed from the market.

Anecdote is a synonym for conclusive evidence, after all.

Re:Since when

[31415926535897]

He couldn't tell the difference between Coke and Diet Coke with the first sip?

Re:Since when

[olsmeister]

Were you drinking Diet Jagermeister?

Re:Since when

[Andy Dodd]

Have you seen a doctor about that?

Aspartame is known to cause health problems in a small subset of the population - those with PKU.

Re:Since when

[fahrbot-bot]

When he ordered a drink, he specifically said "NOT diet, I can't have phenylalanine". They brought him Diet Coke. He drank enough that some time (maybe twenty minutes) later, ...

Not to throw soda on your story or that person, but, if true, he's obviously an idiot. I don't know *anyone* that cannot tell the difference between regular and diet soda with one sip. In addition, according to the Wikipedia page you referenced, people with that affliction, at least if severe enough to cause the kind of reaction that guy mentioned, would be on a severely restricted diet and restaurant dining would be problematic:

The diet requires severely restricting or eliminating foods high in Phe, such as meat, chicken, fish, eggs, nuts, legumes, cheese, milk and other dairy products. Starchy foods, such as potatoes and corn are generally acceptable in controlled amounts,

Lastly, there's nothing to indicate that a trip to the hospital would be warranted, especially for such a small amount ingested:

PKU is not a food allergy or a digestive problem. Eating "forbidden" foods does not cause an immediate reaction. The phenylalanine from that food remains in the person's system, however, and as Phe accumulates over time they may experience concentration and mood problems, as well as eczema and other symptoms

I'm not saying your story or his reaction is BS, but I'm a little dubious.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, at least he brought something to this discussion.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

He couldn't tell the difference between Coke and Diet Coke with the first sip?

Or by smell?

Re:Since when

[itzly]

Not surprising, actually. Our brains are easily fooled by expectations. Frédérick Brochet once served white wine with red food colouring to wine experts, and they all described it as red wine.

Re:Since when

[smooth wombat]

Not individual evidence, corroborated evidence. Red beets WILL make me puke. No exceptions. Even the smallest piece of beet eaten with a salad will cause this effect, something I have had all my life.

And yes, they should be removed from the market being the vile products they are.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you rather it causes Comic Sans? :)

Re:Since when

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

The thing I hate most about Sucralose is that if you don't squint hard enough on the ingredient list, it looks like Sucrose. The first time I encountered that evil poison, I kept wondering why the pop I drank tasted foul as if it had an artificial sweetener. Only months later did I learn of the Sucrolose vs Sucrose deception.

Re:Since when

[Rei]

Let me take a wild guess that the hospital said he was a-okay.

People with phenylketonuria are not that hypersensitive to drinks containing aspartame. Protein-rich foods is usually more challenging to deal with since they're harder to avoid and can provide more phenylalanine. And the condition is not an immediate reaction like a food allergy, it's an accumulative problem. There's no way drinking a diet soda should have landed him in the hospital.

I have a strong suspicion that this person was like 90% of "gluten intolerant" persons: a self-diagnosed hypochondriac.

Re:Since when

[ArcadeMan]

Infunnirmative.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was referring to the fact that most sugar in the US is made from beets.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't shoot him, or you'll be engaging in a cliche as old as, well, horseback riding.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

This is then precisely what AC is for.

Re:Since when

[Yunzil]

Pepsi should also advertise "Contains No Radioactive Nuclear Waste".

Nah, they'll never beat Nuka-Cola with that attitude.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

No Radioactive Nuclear Waste Added

Re:Since when

[MiniMike]

How about "Does not exceed FDA Recommended Dietary Allowance for Radioactive Nuclear Waste"?

Re:Since when

[alvinrod]

If a person isn't ever supposed to drink diet, how would they become acquainted to the taste?

If they drank the non-diet version regularly enough they could probably tell if they were given a mystery bottle, but with fountain pop, the taste isn't always as consistent. There's also the chance that the person normally is a Coke person but found themselves in a Pepsi restaurant (or vice versa) and doesn't have much of a clue about how the diet version of the product should taste.

For example, you could give me a glass and tell me it's Pepsi, and I probably couldn't tell you if it was actually Pepsi, diet Pepsi, or some cheap imitation cola. Similarly, I wouldn't know the difference between Mountain Dew and Mellow Yellow as I never drink those at all.

Before you go off claiming that someone is an idiot, it might be best to examine the problem from their point of view or to look for holes in your own explanation. I myself am a little skeptical that someone could have an episode over what was probably a small amount of the substance, but people have all manner of different tolerance levels and we could be dealing with an individual who is a few standard deviations towards the fringe.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Since always. The problem is not enough people actually understand how the body works. We were taught about organs, which certainly is important but not down to a cellular level and how cells communicate and functions. To understanding how the cells responds and interacts.We are given misinformation probably partly because of lack on know-how and partly because of the big money involved in health, or lack thereof.

Take vitamin B4, almost impossible to get, yet highly benficial for your heart. Take how some people have gotten sick from vitamins. But they don't show they were synthetic vitamins and not vaguely proper live vitamins. Whole Foods are almost the only ones where you get vitamins as a food. Which is the natural way of getting nutrition. Vitamin C, one key vitamin, is not ascorbic acid. That is like saying the shell around the nut is the nut. Ascorbic acid is a very watered down version, and should not be eaten on an empty stomach. That right there is an indicator something is wrong.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

It is partially marketing. Aspartame is about 10 years older than Sucralose, so has 10 years more research and 10 years more negative publicity. Pepsi wants to sell soda, and this is way to differentiate from Coke.

Beyond that there does seem to be differences, and other will correct me when I am wrong. One difference is that Aspartame breaks down into many scary chemicals, while Sucralose passes through the body. This may cause problems in the environment as it may be that Sucralose will build and cause problems.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

And extra spaces at the end of sentences.

Re:Since when

[fahrbot-bot]

All good points, though Aspartame has a pretty distinctive taste, especially in contrast to sugar. Perhaps I shouldn't have lead with the phrase "idiot" as I didn't mean it in the intellectual sense. I have known a few people to exaggerate or get a little too hyperbolic about a (sometimes supposed) food allergy or sensitivity. Like a woman I know who says she's allergic to chocolate (which is actually *super* rare) when I know she's in fact not, but just wants to avoid eating it because it's her "crack" - which is fine, but it would be better if she'd just own up to her chocolate addiction than claiming a medical condition.

Re:Since when

[Ravaldy]

IMO you should just avoid both.

Although aspartame can provide benefits to those with diabetes since it increases the production of insulin.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, fun fact, *fountain* diet coke is sweetened with saccharin, not aspartame. Saccharin does not contain phenylalanine.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

it isn't.. it's worse..

and what's worse even is that it has found itself in so many products that you would not expect an artificial sweetener to be in.

what pepsi is really saying is that sucralose is cheaper than aspartame, and they want to use a cheaper ingredient but charge the same (and eventually more) for the products it contains.

diet sodas should cost less than sugar or hfcs sweetened ones, but they don't.... and it's why you see diet soda ads much more often... higher profit margins.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with the font change, dude? Are you special or something?

That shit is hard on the eyes.

Re:Since when

[Chalnoth]

I generally think it's better-tasting. Shouldn't be any more or less dangerous, though. I doubt there's anything worth worrying about.

For sure it's much healthier than sugar, though.

Re:Since when

[ncc74656]

If you think that's bad, sugar causes a WingDing font.

Better that than Comic Sans MS.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

All diet soda has a distinctive taste. I have no idea how people can drink this shit with a straight face. Diet soda taste bad, but Coke/Pepsi Zero is simply disgusting mixture of chemicals.

If you are in a situation when you decided to drink soda, drink a regular soda. It is maybe few calories more but at least you can finish drinking it normally.

Re:Since when

[nytes]

Purely anecdotal, I know.

My wife has fibromyalgia.

It took me some time to notice, but eventually I started to see a pattern, whereby on days when she drank a diet soda with Aspartame, she had more pain. I started getting Diet Rite at one point (the only diet soda made with Sucralose for several years). She seems to have more good days once I got the Aspartame out of her diet.

No scientific study to back me up. Just my own observation.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

And furthermore, it causes Courier font.

That's caused by a look-at-me narcissism I'm afraid.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/641/

Re:Since when

[sound vision]

Ding ding, zoom! Mr. Saturn font!

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot should stay away from cola's and drink water. Too bad darwin didn't catch him... this time.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends... people who normally drink regular Pepsi can instantly tell the difference. People who normally drink Diet Pepsi aren't... quite... sure. Especially if it's the fountain variety. If you mis-adjust a postmix drink fountain to use more syrup than you're supposed to, the higher the syrup concentration, the more it ends up tasting like regular Pepsi. Ditto for Coke & Diet Coke.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not an HTML guru. How are these asshats overriding my browser settings? I have very specifically went and set firefox to show Arial and Lucida Console and yet these guys continually make my eyes bleed with courier. How can I make them stop?

Re:Since when

[Obfuscant]

but I know that I am one of the lucky few who gets to enjoy an adverse reaction to aspartame. From a purely anecdotal view,

It's not an anecdotal situation. Aspartame contains phenylalanine, which some people cannot process. This results in a condition known as phenylketonuria, or PKU. If you overload the phenylalanine hydroxylase metabolic pathway, you can suffer from mild forms of PKU even if you are not totally deficient in that enzyme.

The levels of aspartame normally consumed shouldn't be a problem except for PKUs, unless you switch to sugar-free koolaid and drink gallons of the stuff. If it's giving you problems in diet drinks, then you probably can't eat a bucketload of turkey without feeling it, either. Turkey meat is high in phenylalanine, too.

Re:Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is Sucralose better than Aspartame?

Since the "public" perceptions says it is....
too many food babes, dr ozs and other quacks have shown the masses that everything that does not sponsor them is bad

Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspartame *is* extremely safe. Heck, we even have very long term human proof (ask a type-1 Diabetic that still enjoys soft drinks). And, as a diet soda drinker for a long time, I've not only become accustomed to the taste, but I prefer it.

The only study that seems to have any validity at all is that diet soft drinks won't make you lose weight any easier than just not eating, because your body appears to crave the calories that were not given to it from the diet soda. That's not dangerous, it's just disappointing if you're using it for weight loss. They do still keep the ridiculous amount of sugar in a "regular" pop out of your diet, which is not a bad thing.

Oh well, Diet Coke is still better anyways.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspartame *is* extremely safe.

This message brought to you by the Aspartame industry and FOX News.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[ArmoredDragon]

I still drink regular soda as part of my diet, but instead of once a day it's more like once a month. I can't stand diet soda, and will only occasionally have it.

But diet soda is certainly better from a nutrition standpoint. The sheer volume of sugar in regular soda I think is the reason I developed Non-Alchoholic Fatty Liver Disease, and is probably why my cholesterol/triglyceride count is so high without statin drugs. I'll be able to test that theory after another 6 months or so because I've been off of high sugar foods for about 6 months so far, and the cholesterol/triglyceride figures have already dropped even on a low dose of lovastatin.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, everyone, look! It's the "You watch Faux News probably, right winger!" guy! He's out blathering about Fox News on every comment he disagrees with!

Seriously, though, fuck-stain - there is no evidence sucralose is any safer in the amounts ingested via diet soda. Ironically, your dreary, pre-canned comment about Fox News would be backwards, as they would typically be seen as the _anti_ science channel.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[ArmoredDragon]

This message brought to you by the Aspartame industry and FOX News.

This message brought to you by the Organic Food Lobby, and the Church of Homeopathic Medicine.

Seriously, Aspartame is very safe. All of the anecdotes about it killing ants and whatnot are really just shitty science (somebody was able to repeat the same result using just a puddle of water, which also kills ants.) It's a non-nutrative sweetener, which means as far as your body is concerned, it is inert. There have already been decades of investigation into aspartame, and none have linked any kind of illness to it (except of course the bunk materials spread by the Church of Homeopathic Medicine.)

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspartame *is* extremely safe.

This message brought to you by the Aspartame industry and FOX News.

Pepsi is a junk drink. Aspartame or not, Pepsi is junk. And the same goes for all soda drinks.
They are not healthy.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Megane]

I actually started drinking Diet Coke years ago because of the aspartame. I had one too many cans of Coca-Cola that just tasted awful (this was in the Coke Classic era after the New Coke fiasco), and found that the aspartame in Diet Coke not only tasted better, but consistently better.

I think one of the reasons that regular Coca-Cola tasted bad may have been because I don't care much for drinking them really cold, and the HFCS was probably tasting bad when it wasn't chilled. Aspartame has its own problems (it's not shelf stable at neutral pH, but perfect at soda-water acidity), and to me it has a bitter "before-taste" (in contrast to saccharine's bitter after-taste) giving it a bite that I actually sort of like.

And I really do not like saccharine. I'm old enough to remember Diet Pepsi from the '80s. It was absolutely awful. And really, all this got started when cyclamates got a bad reputation. It's actually still banned in the US, due to a lack of motivation to remove the ban.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[fahrbot-bot]

You might be interested in this video lecture Sugar: The Bitter Truth by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Eponymous Coward]

You drink one regular soda per month and it's the reason you developed liver disease? How big is that soda?

Re:Won't be drinking it

[jgtg32a]

Wait are you telling me Dihydrogen Monoxide is dangerous?

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone sure pushed your buttons. You're quite defensive, aren't you?

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

Take that back! It's an insult to the Organic Food Lobby and the Church of Homeopathic Medicine!

Captcha: smears

Re:Won't be drinking it

[PRMan]

At least for me, Aspartame gives me really bad migraines. Actually, it does it to my wife and daughters as well. And there are studies that show that it may be related to the rise in Alzheimer's.

The company paying for all those studies saying that it's safe is Monsanto, who doesn't have the best track record for being honest about what all their chemicals are doing (see honeybee hive death, different proteins in GMO wheat, pesticides, etc.)

Re:Won't be drinking it

[PRMan]

Actually, there is evidence that Aspartame contributes to Non-Alchoholic Fatty Liver Disease.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with your future bouts of the following...

Altzheimers
Parkinsons

and if your diet included Sodium Benzoate preservatives, then add Cancer to that future.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

In certain circumstances, certainly.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

somebody was able to repeat the same result using just a puddle of water, which also kills ants.

Water, Water, what hast thou dunst?

Re:Won't be drinking it

[ArmoredDragon]

Citation needed.

Even if that is the case though, I rarely have aspartame. I honestly hate the way it tastes, and I don't like things that have it in general. This is the main reason I hate diet soda, and truth be told I probably consume even less of it than I do regular soda. Given the low quantity of aspartame I consume, it's extremely unlikely that it has anything to do with it.

And besides, googling it I don't see any research linking the two, only one NIH article that mentions people with NAFLD that also happen to consume diet soda, but they consume much more of other stuff that is known to trigger it.

Which by the way, "natural" fruit juice is among the list of things known to cause NAFLD, so from that standpoint alone, the traditional naturopathic medicine dogma that "natural juice" is healthy for you is actually false. In fact, every now and then you hear stories about people dying from consuming organic juice because the (rather insane) belief that pasteurizing it is "unnatural" and somehow bad for you.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

AC clearly never saw the scene in Doc Hollywood where they give the sick kid a soda.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[rubycodez]

Takes all month to drink it so I'm guessing 60-100 liters

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Chalnoth]

If you're going to cast a wide-enough net, you can always find a negative health effect that is related to anything. Especially if you only use low-quality trials.

I looked into this specific issue, and as near as I can tell the only evidence of this is a trial of 14 men, and their main claim was that there was no difference between the aspartame group and the sugar group. With a sample size of 14, that's not at all surprising.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[BarbaraHudson]

Wow, someone sure pushed your buttons. You're quite defensive, aren't you?

Probably hyper from drinking too much soda.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[Anonymous Coward]

(see honeybee hive death, different proteins in GMO wheat, pesticides, etc.)

Monsanto doesn't make neonicotinoid insecticides (the ones implicated in CCD). That's Syngenta and Bayer CropScience. No one makes GMO wheat. It doesn't exist as a commercial product anywhere in the world. Reports of different proteins have only occurred clickbait sites, and they're all incorrect.

They do manufacture a single pesticide, glyphosate (Roundup). It's very safe, compared to other herbicides like atrazine.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[onthemightofprinces]

It's more likely to be the caffeine in most soft drinks which gives you headaches.

Re:Won't be drinking it

[tehcyder]

The alternative to drinking diet soda is not drinking ordinary soda, it's not drinking soda at all.

And they replaced it with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. Now we get a dozen unknown chemicals to replace it.

Re:And they replaced it with?

[Minwee]

Great. Now we get a dozen unknown chemicals to replace it.

There's nothing "unknown" about crisp, refreshing Strontium-90.

Re:And they replaced it with?

[MachineShedFred]

Are we ushering in the age of Nuka-Cola?

Re:And they replaced it with?

[Z00L00K]

Arsenic is actually having a sweet taste.

Re:And they replaced it with?

[rubycodez]

slightly sweet and metallic, actually. Beryllium is nice and sweet. For those that prefer savory over sweet some potassium cyanide with its bitter nutty taste might be preferred

Re:And they replaced it with?

[tehcyder]

Arsenic is actually having a sweet taste.

I bet there's not many people who can say that.

Aspartame not harmful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspartame gives me severe, crippling migraines. It is consist, repeatable, testable, and happens within an hour of consuming aspartame. So, yes, aspartame is extremely harmful.

Re:Aspartame not harmful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody call the FDA, an AC is having a bad reaction to aspartame!

Re:Aspartame not harmful?

[osu-neko]

Aspartame gives me severe, crippling migraines.

Are you using caffeine-free soda to test this? Just making sure; headaches are also a symptom of caffeine withdrawl.

Re: Aspartame not harmful?

[Anonymous Coward]

You likely suffer from phenylketonuria. It says right on the can for people like you to avoid aspartame. PKU affects less than 20k per year so it's harmful to a small group of people not the general public.

Re:Aspartame not harmful?

[james_shoemaker]

I'll chime in on the aspartame==migrane bandwagon. I don't use caffeine, but consuming things like crystal lite can trigger migraines for me. I don't have the same problem with sucralose or sugar.

    I have also had the same reaction from accidentally consuming a diet coke (handed to me by my wife to hold and drank absent-mindedly).

Re:Aspartame not harmful?

[PraiseBob]

Same here. 1 can of aspartame based diet soda and like clockwork I get a blinding headache which prevents me from doing just about anything.

Funny how the aspartame lobby talks about safe it is, and how only .0001% of people have side effects, but within an hour of the story being posted there are many multiple anecdotes about how this product causes agonizing pain. It is still a small percentage of people, but it is more than the FDA claims.

Re:Aspartame not harmful?

[PRMan]

Myself as well. There is no comparison between a mild caffeine headache and the splitting migraine associated with Aspartame.

Of course it's more than the FDA said, the head of the FDA at the time of approval immediately quit and got a cushy job at Monsanto immediately afterward.

Read away: https://www.google.com/search?q=fda+head+aspartame+monsanto&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Re:Aspartame not harmful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how the aspartame lobby talks about safe it is, and how only .0001% of people have side effects, but within an hour of the story being posted there are many multiple anecdotes about how this product causes agonizing pain. It is still a small percentage of people, but it is more than the FDA claims.

That's called "confirmation bias."

Re:Aspartame not harmful?

[rubycodez]

for you.

maybe you have phenylketonuria, most people don't

Re:Aspartame not harmful?

[Anonymous Coward]

And confirmation bias is a real thing that you scientists need to account for.

Do the Math

[magusxxx]

1. New stuff is 3x sweeter - 2. You use 1/3 less - 3. ???? - 4. Profit

Re:Do the Math

[jklovanc]

Unless it costs 3x as much to make.

Re:Do the Math

[MachineShedFred]

so it would be $0.03 per can rather than $0.01. Oh, darn.

Re:Do the Math

[jklovanc]

I think it is funny that this comment come under the "Do the Math" heading.

10,000,000 x .02 = $200,000

That is not insignificant when talking about profit.

Re:Do the Math

[MachineShedFred]

When the profit is $0.70 per can, you're still looking at being +$7M at the same volume. And, if this change does what they're hoping, which is to preserve sell-through and maybe increase market share against competition that is still using aspartame due to whatever consumer belief may exist, $200k is a tiny investment for growth.

Re:Do the Math

[BarbaraHudson]

1. New stuff is 3x sweeter - 2. You use 1/3 less - 3. ???? - 4. Profit

Of ot's 3x sweeter, shouldn't you be using 2/3 less?

Re:Do the Math

[tehcyder]

10,000,000 x .02 = $200,000

That is not insignificant when talking about profit.

That depends on whether your profit is $1 million or $1 billion a year.

Headaches...

[Anonymous Coward]

When my wife tries something that touts "low in calories" or some such nonsense if she gets a headache she'll state it probably has aspartame in it and it always does. She says she is not alone as far as getting headaches from this additive. If it is safe why does it cause headaches, even in tiny amounts? (for some people that is, I've never gotten them from this myself)

Re: Headaches...

[Anonymous Coward]

I get headaches from spicy food. Doesn't mean it's killing me. My body just doesn't like capsaicin.

Re:Headaches...

[xyra132]

Correlation!=causation. So many things have aspartame in them. Have you checked when she doesn't have a headache if she is definitely not consuming aspartame?

Re:Headaches...

[MitchDev]

Some people are deathly allergic to peanuts and peanut products, should we ban them all?

Re: Headaches...

[Anonymous Coward]

Test her for phenylketonuria (PKU). She likely has this rare condition. Look on the side of a diet Coke it will say "Phenylketonurics â" contains phenylalanine". Now you know why.

Re:Headaches...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we should definitely ban all those annoying people with peanut allergies.

Re: Headaches...

[cayenne8]

I get headaches from spicy food. Doesn't mean it's killing me. My body just doesn't like capsaicin.

Oh wow.

I REALLY feel sorry for you man. That is really one of the great things in life to enjoy...chiles!!

And with a diet filled with plenty of chiles and beer, you never have to worry about regularity!!

:)

Re:Headaches...

[Anonymous Coward]

Peanuts/Peanut butter and otherwise is already banned at many schools.

Re:Headaches...

[Anonymous Coward]

We should ban the poisons that make people allergic to peanuts! There are populations of people that eat peanuts, but no one's allergic. The difference between the different populations, is that there's agents in one population, but not in the other, that increase digestion mal-absorption, which makes people more likely to have food allergies.

Alt

[Anonymous Coward]

Tab

Safety vs. taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I think sales are dropping for sodas with artificial sweeteners isn't so much the safety issue, but the fact that they taste like sh!t...

artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[calzones]

The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.

The insulin causes two things: 1) it tells cells to uptake sugar from your blood, which leaves you slightly hypoglycemic, since the insulin response is out of proportion to the actual sugar load consumed (particularly on an empty stomach). 2) chronically elevated insulin leads to insulin resistance (the precursor to metabolic syndrome which makes you fat, diabetic, hypertensive, etc).

This is the real reason we need to stop using most artificial sweeteners. Stevia and Erythritol have not been shown to cause this insulin response. It doesn't mean they aren't also bad. Only that for now, the jury is still out and they appear to be safe. Stevia in particular has been associated with something of an opposite effect, where it seems to improve insulin response in people who consume it.

Now for the popular reason they're getting rid of it:

Aspartame itself appears to have neurological effects as well, which in sufficient quantities causes problems. I personally know that any more than 20 oz of Diet Coke starts making me feel "odd" for lack of a better way to put it. It's not the caffeine. I don't get the effect from non-aspartame caffeinated drinks.

This seems like a relatively minor reason to stop using aspartame unless you're consuming vast quantities. Regardless, people think it's a neurotoxin and can't have that. (Forget about all the other benzene additives, colorants... even caffeine itself is a toxin).

Anyway, glad to see they are doing away with it. Here's hoping they don't use use Sucralose, which is even worse than Aspartame at producing a phantom insulin spike. (And people get upset at the chlorine... but say nothing about drinking chlorinated water or soaking in hot tubs).

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[slashmydots]

What a complete and utter shit post. It's psychosomatic or the caffeine making you feel "different." Or a giant list of other things. Insulin is NOT released by substances that are not sugar. Your digestive system is smarter than that. Also, it only is harmful to your brain if it's mixed with a lot of MSG.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[calzones]

I forgot to point out above: when the insulin tells your cells to uptake the free blood sugar, unless you've been exercising a lot, it's your fat cells doing so.

So even though a diet soda has zero calories, you just got a tiny bit fatter.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you eat kale.

Re: artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of crap. If only this were true, type 2 diabetics could just drink diet coke and watch their blood sugars come down. Forget using drugs with scary side effects like glipizide or sitagliptin to increase insulin production. Diet Coke is the miracle that all diabetics have been waiting for!

In reality, aspartame has no effect on insulin levels and does not cause low blood sugar.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

citation please, this sounds like horseshit.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[calzones]

Re insulin response in sucralose: http://www.medicalnewstoday.co...

Also, protein itself elicits an insulin response.

Admittedly the case for Aspartame is weaker, and I can't find the citation right now, but despite early studies showing no insulin response for Aspartame, a more recent study DID make make a correlation.

Either way, artificial sweeteners being associated with insulin resistance regardless of BMI has been well-established. It stands to reason, given the evidence that Sucralose has been confirmed to result in an Insulin response, and that Insulin management in general is a tricky thing, that one should treat all artificial sweeteners with the same level of suspicion in this regard.

The only thing that excuses Stevia for now is that studies have shown a beneficial effect as opposed to any negative effect. Feel free to be a lab rat, just be an informed lab rat.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Major Blud]

I'm a type 1 diabetic you insensitive clod! I have no insulin to respond with! ;-)

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[gregsmac]

Total Bullshit response. You've summed up all the incorrect science and put it out there as fact. You even offered the indisputable "makes me feel odd" you have wasted my time

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[kosh271]

Performing a quick search - Aspartame does NOT induce an insulin response:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
From the abstract "The indicated increased clearance rate of plasma Phe after albumin may be caused by the significant increase of insulin, on which aspartame had no effect."

Could you cite your source where Aspartame does induce an insulin response?

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[jdavidb]

Here's hoping they don't use use Sucralose, which is even worse than Aspartame

That's about as likely as slashdot posters starting to read the articles that are posted.

Re: artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[calzones]

The problem with diabetes is that either you're T1 and you don't produce insulin (therefore no response) or T2 and your cells are insulin resistant and the temporary extra insulin you get from a diet soda has no effect because the cells just ignore it.

I posted a citation above. But do your own research. Nothing is conclusive in nutrition. Far from it (just look at the cholesterol debacle). But the evidence is damning.

Like I said, go ahead and be a lab rat, but be informed.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Calsar]

I assume you are referring to the study conducted on 7 people. Granted they did do a survey that consisted of 400 people, but the direct research sample was very small. This was also a single paper. The results are interesting and should prompt more studies, but it should not be used as a basis to determine if artificial sweeteners are bad for you without a more comprehensive study.

The worst case scenario is that something that has been studied for decades on thousands of people is replaced with something that has not been studied as thoroughly and that is later to discovered to have bad effects. It's fad science.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

With what energy?

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Twinbee]

Does xylitol also cause the insulin response do you know?

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[thaylin]

You are incorrect:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[GargamelSpaceman]

artificial sweeteners being associated with insulin resistance regardless of BMI has been well-established

You didn't do anything invalid with that factoid, but it's worth noting that it stands to reason that people feeling the need to watch their weight for whatever reason would be more likely to consume artificial sweeteners, and that feeling the need to take measures such as drinking diet soft drinks is likely due to the perception that without those measures BMI ( and liklihood of Diabetes ) would be worse.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

Hypoglycemic here. I suffer from being overly sensitive to insulin. It's sort of the opposite of being diabetic. Let me tell you what would happen if diet soda caused an increase in insulin. If it were minor, it would make you sleepy. I'm very familiar with this, because this happens when I drink sugary beverages. I get an insulin spike from my body overcompensating and then I really want a nap. Where it get's real fun is when there is no sugar for the insulin to act upon. I have a scar on the back of my head from one time I lost consciousness. Luckily I had eaten shortly before and the sugar was on its way, as if that had not been the case I would have likely slipped into a coma and died.

So, let me ask you, if diet soda causes in insulin response without providing any sugar, why are not more people slipping into comas and dying from it? With the amount I see a lot of people drink, this response would be quite frequent.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[pr0fessor]

Sugar free gums with aspartame and sorbitol causes my blood sugar to drop out fast. Diet soda that just has aspartame still causes a drop in blood sugar but not as rapidly. This is not a guess I started monitoring my diet and blood sugar in the 90s I stay away from both of these products.

When Pepsi started coming out with throwbacks Dr Pepper also released their Dr Pepper Heritage that was made with sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup. It also appears that I have an easier time processing sugar then high fructose corn syrup not to mention that the Dr Pepper Heritage tasted just like I remember Dr Pepper tasting when I was a kid.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[MachineShedFred]

Unless you're soaking in a hot tub that is:

A. actually using chlorine (most use bromine because it's much more stable at hot tub temperatures, doesn't cause people's eyes to burn, and doesn't fade bathing suits) and
B. being Dichlor-shocked while you're sitting in it,

you're talking about a concentration of 3-6 parts per million if the maintenance is being done properly. It's enough to kill off single-celled organisms, but not enough to do jack shit to your skin.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[quantaman]

The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.

The insulin causes two things: 1) it tells cells to uptake sugar from your blood, which leaves you slightly hypoglycemic, since the insulin response is out of proportion to the actual sugar load consumed (particularly on an empty stomach). 2) chronically elevated insulin leads to insulin resistance (the precursor to metabolic syndrome which makes you fat, diabetic, hypertensive, etc).

This is the real reason we need to stop using most artificial sweeteners. Stevia and Erythritol have not been shown to cause this insulin response. It doesn't mean they aren't also bad. Only that for now, the jury is still out and they appear to be safe. Stevia in particular has been associated with something of an opposite effect, where it seems to improve insulin response in people who consume it.

I'm not actually sure if the insulin response is as big a deal as it's made out to be, it seems like insulin has become a bit of a diet bogeyman over the last few years and I'm not sure how well it's backed up.

Personally I suspect it's a lot more psychological than most people let on, I know from experience that when I eat something sweet (cake, doughnut, sugary beverage) I often end up hungrier than when I started. The speed of the reaction makes me suspect this has nothing to do with insulin or fake vs real sugar but has more to do with the sweet taste hitting my tongue. Simply put when I taste yummy food I want more! And my understanding is that palatability is a well established cause of overeating.

There does seem to be evidence that artificial sweeteners are actually promoting obesity, but from what I've seen it's still really preliminary.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Em Adespoton]

There's also the fact that Stevia is a naturally occurring plant wit a standard cellular structure, so our bodies know how to deal with it for the most part. All the other artificial sweeteners listed are designed to avoid being processed by our system, even though they bond appropriately to our taste receptors.

I would be interested in a study comparing stevia to sugar cane, sugar beet, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup -- all in their processed and non-processed varieties. Most artificial sweetening these days is done by sugar beet derivatives (artificial in this case meaning not naturally occurring in the other ingredients) or high fructose corn syrup.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

Source? Any peer reviewed and independently verified studies showing a statistically significant causality?

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

I googled and this is what i found:
http://authoritynutrition.com/xylitol-101/

So apparently not.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[danomac]

Aspartame itself appears to have neurological effects as well, which in sufficient quantities causes problems. I personally know that any more than 20 oz of Diet Coke starts making me feel "odd" for lack of a better way to put it. It's not the caffeine. I don't get the effect from non-aspartame caffeinated drinks.

Aspartame has always given me an instant headache, even in small quantities (like a 300 ml can.) It's not just me, either - I was surprised to find out a few people at work are the same way.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspartame itself appears to have neurological effects as well, which in sufficient quantities causes problems. I personally know that any more than 20 oz of Diet Coke starts making me feel "odd" for lack of a better way to put it. It's not the caffeine. I don't get the effect from non-aspartame caffeinated drinks.

Sounds like you might have a mild form of phenylketonuria or something else giving you problems to dispose the excess phenylalanine. If you get the feeling the next time try a ketone test to see if that's it.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

It's incredibly easy to test this hypothesis. Check your blood sugar, eat a huge load of artificial sweeteners, check your blood sugar again. You won't find any response. And none of the larger, proper studies have shown a response either.

Incidentally, a long ways back, I used to believe aspartame affected me as well. Then I read up on the science. Guess what? The placebo effect disappeared! There have been studies of people who claim that aspartame (and MSG) cause them headaches. When a double blind test is performed, there's no difference observed.

I drink a couple diet sodas daily, use sucralose blends in certain cooking, and have had no adverse health affects whatsoever. For me, I'm trying to strictly reduce sugar in my diet, for general health, not to lose weight. Unlike artificial sweeteners, real sugar is extremely well scientifically verified to be bad for everyone.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[rubycodez]

There are zero studies proving any such insulin response in humans

you repeat urban legends

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

>The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.

What a load of horseshit, and despite being pestered about it, not a single citation has been provided by you.

F U for spreading disinformation.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[BarbaraHudson]

I'm a type 1 diabetic you insensitive clod! I have no insulin to respond with! ;-)

Go look in your fridge. :-)

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.

The insulin causes two things: 1) it tells cells to uptake sugar from your blood, which leaves you slightly hypoglycemic, since the insulin response is out of proportion to the actual sugar load consumed (particularly on an empty stomach). 2) chronically elevated insulin leads to insulin resistance (the precursor to metabolic syndrome which makes you fat, diabetic, hypertensive, etc).

This is the real reason we need to stop using most artificial sweeteners. Stevia and Erythritol have not been shown to cause this insulin response. It doesn't mean they aren't also bad. Only that for now, the jury is still out and they appear to be safe. Stevia in particular has been associated with something of an opposite effect, where it seems to improve insulin response in people who consume it.

Now for the popular reason they're getting rid of it:

Aspartame itself appears to have neurological effects as well, which in sufficient quantities causes problems. I personally know that any more than 20 oz of Diet Coke starts making me feel "odd" for lack of a better way to put it. It's not the caffeine. I don't get the effect from non-aspartame caffeinated drinks.

This seems like a relatively minor reason to stop using aspartame unless you're consuming vast quantities. Regardless, people think it's a neurotoxin and can't have that. (Forget about all the other benzene additives, colorants... even caffeine itself is a toxin).

Anyway, glad to see they are doing away with it. Here's hoping they don't use use Sucralose, which is even worse than Aspartame at producing a phantom insulin spike. (And people get upset at the chlorine... but say nothing about drinking chlorinated water or soaking in hot tubs).

Type 1 diabetic here AGAIN, NO THEY DO NOT! PLEASE STOP SPREADING THIS BS.. THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget that the liver stores a form of sugar than is released on demand, and even the smell of fresh baking is enough to release some of this, which in turn gets converted to fat cells. So over time you can actually gain weight if you walk past a bakery on your way to and from work. Yes, this is expressed badly, but I'm sure the medical terminology fanatics among us can translate.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

According to what you said, stevia is already off the hook because it's not artificial. Because plants can't be poisonous or something.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Major Blud]

LOL (seriously, I did) :-)

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.

That is a common internet Myth, similar to the It causes cancer one. One flawed study which was later withdrawn made that claim. insulin is a chemical response not a response to taste or anything triggered by the brain hence there is no insulin response from artificial sweetners as they are not recognized by the body as sugar.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

just because you posted AC doesn't mean we don't know it's you, slashmydots, who is doubling down on the derp.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[PeDRoRist]

That can be very serious, especially in children. My son has a mild hyperphenylalaninemia, which could severely impair his neuronal development if untreated. Well, there is no treatment in the strict sense, appart from thightly controlling his phenylalanine levels and since this amino acid is found in proteins, that can get tricky. One thing's for sure though, aspartame is completely prohibited.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspartame itself appears to have neurological effects as well, which in sufficient quantities causes problems. I personally know that any more than 20 oz of Diet Coke starts making me feel "odd" for lack of a better way to put it. It's not the caffeine. I don't get the effect from non-aspartame caffeinated drinks.

Aspartame has always given me an instant headache, even in small quantities (like a 300 ml can.) It's not just me, either - I was surprised to find out a few people at work are the same way.

I have this problem as well,
Didn't know initially what was causing it (this was back in the late '80s/early '90s) but by logging what I was eating/drinking I soon worked out that it was this stuff in diet drinks that seemed to trigger the raging headaches.
Fine, I worked round it by avoiding products containing it, and have done for years, but I don't know if they do this in the US, here in the UK they've been 'mixing' aspartame with sugar in various products which in the past just contained added sugar.
One word for them: bastards.
As to Stevia et al, sorry, but most drinks/products containing them do not taste 'right', still, rather Stevia than Aspartame, but I'd rather they just stop trying to cover up the lack of taste/flavour by trying to trick the tastebuds into thinking 'ooooh sugary!' by adding this crap in the first instance (I'd also like them to stop adding unnecessary sugar to stuff as well).

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[Anonymous Coward]

I measure a blood sugar spike when drinking a Sugar Free Red Bull that has zero for everything except salt. It's not just SFRB, but other things that do this as well.

FTFY

[jklovanc]

So, yes, aspartame is extremely harmful for a small minority of people.

There are many substances that are extremely harmful to a small number of people either through allergies or sensitivities.

Re:FTFY

[PRMan]

True, but allergies require a substance to actually be a food (a substance that most people's body can process, but yours can't). Aspartame is NOT a food. Nobody's body can process Aspartame. It's the equivalent of drinking small amounts of formaldehyde, antifreeze or motor oil in order to get a taste you like.

Re:FTFY

[jklovanc]

True, but allergies require a substance to actually be a food .

Sorry but this is incorrect. Latex is not a food but some people are allergic to it.

(a substance that most people's body can process, but yours can't

Allergies have nothing to do with ability to process a substance. Allergies are an immune system overreaction to a substance.

In this case there is a specific disorder that causes problems in a small number of people; Phenylketonuria

Re:FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

If PrMan were gay -not that there's anything wrong with that- then latex would indeed be "food".

Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[iONiUM]

There are two major reasons why people incorrectly think aspartame causes cancer:

1. In 1975 a bad study was released saying aspartame caused brain and other cancers. This study became “legend”, and is what everyone thinks about aspartame, but it is not true. There is even an article on Wikipedia specifically about this controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy
2. In 1998, a hoax was released saying aspartame caused all sorts of serious diseases, and people believed it: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htm. It’s also on snopes http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

Due to the 1975 study, studies were launched and FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut" (http://web.archive.org/web/20071214170430/www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1999/699_sugar.html)

1. The European Food Safety Authority concluded in its 2013 re-evaluation that aspartame and its breakdown products are safe for human consumption at current levels of exposure (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3496.htm)
2. As do other independent studies (http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408440701516184)
3. The national cancer institute has cleared aspartame as having no links to cancer (http://web.archive.org/web/20090212130028/http://cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/AspartameQandA)

There are many more scientific studies on it by national governments showing it’s safe as well:

• UK https://www.food.gov.uk/science/additives/aspartame/
• Canada http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/sweeten-edulcor/aspartame-eng.php
• Australia / New Zealand http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/additives/aspartame/pages/default.aspx

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[bluefoxlucid]

Yeah the studies I've seen on both ends are weak; I don't know where aspartame stands in the pseudoscience realm at the moment. It keeps fluctuating between "aspartame being bad for you is pseudoscience" and "aspartame being safe is pseudoscience".

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[iONiUM]

Certainly no study is perfect, and you are right that there are studies that show it is unsafe too. But what I've linked are federal studies by various governments, the national cancer institute, the FDA and the EFSA. These are pretty big, well funded institutes who would actually benefit by finding it not safe and banning it - for example, Canada has government funded health care, and does not want to have to pay for all sorts of people getting sick from something, which is why they tax so much on 'bad' things and ban what they can.

So I feel pretty secure that it's safe in 'regular' amounts (don't drink like 20 diet pops a day basically). But that goes for everything.

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[PRMan]

And the head of the FDA immediately got a cushy job at Monsanto after approval. What could possibly be wrong with it? Of COURSE it's safe.

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[PRMan]

Many of the studies calling aspartame "safe" used MSG in the "placebo". MSG is well-known to cause the same migraines as aspartame in the same class of people. Because of this, all of the effects were classified as "false positives" because nearly the same percentage had problems with the placebo.

Who puts MSG (a substance well-known for causing migraines in many people) in a placebo? That's shady as hell.

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[WaffleMonster]

There are two major reasons why people incorrectly think aspartame causes cancer:

Just because al gore gets on TV and spouts unsupported nonsense about climate change does not mean climate change isn't real.

Here is another link you might be interested in:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The problem as I see it stems from well deserved suspicion and lack of trust in government institutions. People see the revolving doors and power of money (Ag lobby especially) and influence... they simply don't trust authorities for historically defensible reasons.

Even if you take the question of safety off the table and simply grant for the sake of argument aspartame is perfectly safe... industry and government still seem quite deserving of every last bit of public rejection.

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

aspartame shrinks your prefrontal cortex... that's why i won't drink it, regardless if it did or didn't cause cancer

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

The studies overwhelmingly show it is safe, but the Jenny McCarthys of the world will say it causes autism while believing that Mountain Dew is a contraceptive!

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

So you traded one internet myth for another. both the cancer and prefrontal cortex myths originated from studies on rats who have different reactions to aspartame than humans, yet people keep grabbing onto factoids from these old studies and thinking they apply to humans too.

Re:Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, it tastes like shit.

But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

... then where are the junkies going to get their fix?

I've been drinking diet soda since... always. A lot of it. And I'm hardly alone. If this stuff actually did anything... we'd have a fucking epidemic.

We don't... and as to the supposed addictive qualities of it... if it were addictive, I would know. Personally. The caffeine withdrawals are quite noticeable for me. I didn't have any soda for 24 hours the other day and I literally started getting splitting headaches... and I felt like I wanted to die.

I am one of those people that if I am out of soda at 2 AM... I will go to the store to buy more. Right then. So... I am quite literally addicted to caffeine.

I go cold turkey on it every so often. It takes about two weeks for the physical symptoms to cool off but then you get all sorts of behavioral issues. Low energy... apathy... depression. Yeah. Basically you just feel shitty and tired. I went three months without any caffeine not long ago and for the whole three months I felt shitty and tired. So I said "fuck this" and now I'm back on the caffeine.

So... that's a thing. If you want to talk about health concerns etc then lets talk about Caffeine. That stuff is probably worthy of some stiffer regulation.

But that won't happen because the fucking hipster fake as shit issues people never go after anything they personally enjoy. They're all in their coffee shops pretending to not be watching cat videos and writing little things about how soda is evil.

Well, the caffeine in soda is an issue. But so is the caffeine in coffee.

But the artificial sweetener? Go fuck yourself with a rake. I don't really care, there are several alternative sweeteners that they'll just use instead. Whatever. I really couldn't give a shit. There are some bullshit sweeteners that taste wrong but most of them are fine.

I'm more irritated than anything else... mostly because this is a bullshit issue.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[jandrese]

...from Diet Coke?

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

Precisely... but seriously... if it were a problem... there would noticeable effects in the medical literature and population. From the sweetener there is nothing but supposition. From the caffeine... quite a bit of medical data.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

... then where are the junkies going to get their fix?

I've been drinking diet soda since... always. A lot of it. And I'm hardly alone. If this stuff actually did anything... we'd have a fucking epidemic.

We don't...

Uh, the U.S.A. is the homeland of diet soda (and pretty much the only country with "free refill" madness for anything but tap water). And you have a fucking epidemic of people with eating habits completely unhinged from actual calory consumption. Not unrelated, the U.S. is the heartland of the obese. And studies have linked diet soda with it.

That's not exactly "nothing to be seen here" territory.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

For thousands of years having a country full of well fed people was considered something to brag about.

Look at the world and you'll find lots of places where they're struggling to so much as feed themselves. And a fair number of the ones that can feed themselves only do so with food aid from countries like my own.

What is more, most of the countries that like to call the US fat, are statistically right behind us. The English and the Germans for example are right there with us.

So whatever. The obesity issue is largely caused by a lack of exercise. We used to move around more and we're more sedentary now.

And before you tell me it is the food, do you have any fucking idea how greasy food used to be in the 50s and 60s? And yet the obesity thing is happening now and not then. What changed? People moved around then. Played sports, went on walks... stuff. We're both sitting down on our asses having this conversation and that is something Americans didn't do way back when.

In any case... kindly restrict your comments to something topical instead of trying to pass off idiotic slights against other nations as somehow being a health issue.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been flirting with not being the "heartland of the obese" for a while. Mexico, ton of middle east countries, etc, UK and Australia are trying to compete. Your "is" is too emphasized.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

And a fair number of the ones that can feed themselves only do so with food aid from countries like my own.

And because countries like your own are destabilizing those countries. Including with the alleged food aid, which tends to impoverish local farmers.

Not every country has a strong government like India's that will concentrate on the national interests.

And before you tell me it is the food, do you have any fucking idea how greasy food used to be in the 50s and 60s?

Assuming facts not in evidence. First that the food was actually of the same composition, and then that it is the "greasy" part that is the problem.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

As to your silly belief that the United States invented hunger or incompetence... no. There were wars, famines, plagues, and death long before the old US of A was but a sparkle in the American eye.

Does the US do things on occasion that might make a country less stable then it was already? Sure... comes with taking any role in anything. The Germans had a hard time feeding themselves for awhile after we bombed them into oblivion during the world wars.

With very few exceptions, our actions in such matters are not ones we feel any moral responsibility for...

The most recent issue with Iraq would be an exception to that. But even then, the people that live in these countries must take some responsibility for their own governance or how can they be credited with responsibility when things go well?

Take South Korea which the US had some hand in making the prosperous society it is today. Are the South Koreans responsible for any of their good fortune or is everything they have the responsibility of the US? They would I am sure protest the suggestion that their years of hard work bore no relevance to their current success.

Well dear one, that is a double edged sword is it not? If those that do well are responsible for their good fortune then those that do poorly are responsible as well.

And since we're actually talking about Africa more than anything else because that's where the really impressive famines are... what war or destabilizing action would you like to lay at our feet that caused their little problem? I'd love to hear the logic of it. And keep in mind, you're talking to someone that is logical. Too many people can't even form rational thoughts. Just a warning... try to actually try to think. Otherwise this will be boring for me. And we can't have that.

As to assuming facts, shut up. What food was like in the US in the 50s and 60s is a matter of record, you miserable little weasel. Open a cook book from the time. Do you own an American cook book from the 1950s? I do. Have you ever been to an American restaurant that hasn't changed its menu since the 1950s? I have. Do you have any American grand parents that can tell you in detail what the food was at the time? I do.

So kindly sit down, put this bib on, and enjoy this bucket of deep fried dicks. American food prior to the obesity issue was if anything a good deal heavier than it is today because the lighter food was a response to people getting self conscious about their weight. So they started cutting down on fat and sugar. Mostly fat.

What do you think Americans were eating 60 years ago? Wheatgerm? Try bacon, eggs, toast, big wedges of butter, cream... etc.

You guys are fun. So arrogant and so ignorant... all in the same package.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Karmashock, I've read a lot of books and research articles on nutrition in the past 5 or so years and I believe your response to be completely wrong. Here are some findings from the last decade or so of nutrition science.

In the 50's, the "heart healthy" hypothesis gained widespread acceptance because of a charismatic spokesman (Dr. AncelKeys). His theory was that eating fat caused people to be fat. More broadly, his theory was that high fat causes the broad spectrum of "western" diseases such as diabetes, heart disease that are related to diet. This theory has been accepted as gospel for decades.

Recent objective analyses of his data shows that he excluded data which did not fit his ideas, and when looking at all the data, it does not support the "heart healthy" hypothesis. For example, in one study where subjects were force fed 6000 kcal/day on a high fat diet, the subjects did NOT gain weight.

However, looking at diet trends and health over the last hundred or so years shows there IS a DIRECT correlation between the sharp increase in consumption of simple carbohydrates and "western" diseases such as diabetes, heart disease. Rigorous tests that have been done recently show that the health of subjects improve drastically when they significantly limit their intake of simple carbohydrates. These results are not seen by simply reducing fat in the diet.

The past 40 years, America has been told to reduce fat. You won't find a single aisle in the supermarket that doesn't tout "low fat" products. But you know what? The incidence of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and a whole host of other diet-related illnesses have skyrocked in the past 40 years in spite of the "low fat" focus. You know what's also skyrocketed in the past 40 years? The change in food formulations to replace fat with carbohydrates. Go grab your favorite "low fat" food option and compare it to the "full fat" version. 9 times out of ten you'll see that the fat has been replaced by carbohydrates.

I have been reading research on food the past few years and it is pretty clear to me that the problem is not with fat, but with carbohydrates. Are there enough calories in the world to feed everybody? Absolutely, but most of them are junk calories that lead to poor health. Someone once said that "America is the most over-fed and under-nourished nation that exists." And unfortunately, we're exporting this lifestyle to the rest of the world. Don't blame America though--blame the big food companies. Big food has deep pockets, and they're striving to increase their influence. Unfortunately, it's at the expense of everyone's health.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[rubycodez]

bullshit, americans eat massive amounts of calories compared to the rest of the world. Diet soda is not a factor

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

First you seem reasonable and intelligent. That's refreshing. Congratulations I am also reasonable and intelligent. Lets see if we can have a spirited discussion on this issue. :)

As to people eating fewer carbohydrates way back when... you do realize that the modern world was built by carbohydrates?

Staple crops.

Wheat, Rice, Maze, Potatoes, even Poi (Polynesians liked this stuff on their little island paradises... completely gross. Like eating paste.)... no major culture rose without a staple crop.

So your argument is that past generations didn't eat so many carbs? The Egyptians were huge fans of it. They drank a thick beer like drink as the energy drink of the ancient world. Full of carbs. Were the Egyptians fat?

What about the Romans? One of the big things the Romans offered anyone that lived in Rome was free flour. And they offered because Egypt's tribute to Rome was regular shipments of wheat. That wheat was then ground into flour in huge water powered flour mills in the heart of Rome. Water from the aqueducts was run through water wheels to turn mill stones to turn out huge amounts of flour. This flour was given to the people at no cost as a kind of ancient welfare. As you'd imagine , the Romans ate a LOT of wheat in any form you can think of because the flour was literally free to the common people.

Were the ancient Roman's fat? They'd have to have been because they were consuming a lot of simple carbs. No?

As to your reading... All of that just sounds like you've made up your mind. Can we have a discussion for the sake of argument? Is it possible for me to propose alternative theories and have them be listened to with an open mind?

You tell me. What sort of evidence would you like to see?

The biggest problem I have with modern statistics is that they conflate entirely different lifestyles and suggest that the only change was diet. This ignores changes in exercise etc.

As to heart disease etc... I question the accuracy of statistics going back in time. What is more the human body rapidly starts having all sorts of problems after the prime mating and reproductive phase in the life cycle. Pass the 30s or so and everything starts to have problems because evolution stops caring about you. You're just running on inertia at that point.

And to that point, there are some people that can eat cheeseburgers every day and smoke a pack of cigarettes and be very healthy into their 90s. This has been studied. And their DNA has been studied. What they found was that people that seem to be able to do this don't have any one special gene but rather they don't have a lot of genes which generally make us unhealthy. Most people have some of those genes but some people have none of them. Those with literally none of them can abuse their bodies horribly and suffer no consequences from it.

This is the 21st century... this is slashdot... Yes, I am suggesting the genetic engineering diet. Fuck GMO food, I want to GMO me.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[vakuona]

Obesity is not caused by lack of exercise. It is caused by eating too much.

Exercise is not a good way to reduce weight. Eating less (and better) is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/heal...

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

As to your silly belief that the United States invented hunger or incompetence

The only silly belief here is yours that that's somehow what I or anybody else said in this thread.

But no such statement can be found in my review, so it is your silliness, please take ownership of it, and clean up the mess it has made of your own post.

Once you can post a reply devoid of such silliness, I'll consider engaging further with you. Failure to do so will only mean you're not capable of recognizing your responsibility for your own actions.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

Actually that was your argument. You blamed all hunger in the world and the obvious incompetence at the root of most of it on the US.

Now, you may not wish to maintain that argument, but then you're going to have to limit your argument to specific countries and specify what the US did to create famine in those societies.

Absent that, your position is so vague that you're effectively blaming us for everything and that is obvious not sustainable.

So. Limit and specify or concede.

Those are your options. Make a falsifiable argument like a rational educated human being or you will have not made a sustainable argument.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

That's physically impossible.

Are you telling me that if I spent all day burning calories by working out and maintained eating what I currently eat while not excersing, I would not lose weight?

Not only would I lose weight but I'd need to eat a good deal more or I'd actually start to starve.

Laws of fucking thermodynamics call bullshit on this argument.

People that I find more informed on this issue are body builders. I don't know if you've talked to any of those people but they are a neutritional gold mine. Not because I think what they do to their bodies is healthy or desirable but because they have a better idea of what leads to what then either you or I. They have a whole culture and information pool sourced from the collective experimentation of their entire population.

Now, do body builders eat fewer carbs than the average person? No. They do very carefully monitor their intake of EVERYTHING. That includes protein, carbs, and various vitamins. They literally measure out their meals by the gram in precise amounts of everything. Go to a body builder nutrition store and look at those big jars of powdered everything.

From what I've gleaned from those guys, you have to balance all these things out to suit your ACTIVITY and your goals. If you want to build lots of muscle, they recommend lots of protein and they even say that consuming actual meat is better if your goal is to get bigger. So just big slabs of steak. But of course you need to exercise while you do that and your exercise needs to be focused on encouraging that muscle growth. So cardio for example is less useful in that situation then lots of weight training.

Now, as to your BBC study... I repeat... Egyptians and Romans... oh and the chinese and japanese with their rice.

How much rice do the Japanese eat? Isn't that a major part of their diet since always? And how fat are they? What fatty thing are the Japanese eating that is in your opinion making them thin?

See, the incurious nature of your position is something that bothers me. These statements are made without any attempt to connect them to anything else and it makes me suspicious that its just more medical bullshit.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

How does that undermine anything I said? The fellow took a comment I made about artificial sugar and caffeine and started talking about calorie intake.

Diet soda has no calories. So he was basically just trolling. The various stereotypical anti american comments were fairly typical of his argument. And when I responded to his bullshit in detail he basically evaded because he isn't able to actually have a conversation. He just knows how to make some dumb insults to piss people off. Well, I am annoyed by him but not mad. I responded to him and he ran away like the intellectual coward and lackwit he always was... that is all.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

ehm, depends on what you mean by the rest of the world. Canada, the UK, Australia, and Germany are roughly as fat as we are... so I don't know what kind of superiority you're trying to claim here.

What is more, I'd much rather live in a country full of fat people than one full of skinny people.

We can feed ourselves. We're net food exporters. Come to the US and enjoy a big juicy steak.

What is more, we've eaten very well for a long time. The initial English colonists for example to the Americas generally ate much better than their European cousins. They also had more land... and generally a higher standard of living. And that has mostly not changed.

Our weight is largely a consequence of being well fed and not needing to move around so much. This leads to an increase in weight.

Send Americans back to physical labor instead of having robots do everything and we'll trim up quite quickly.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, sorry, again, these silly beliefs are your own, take responsibility for your fabrications. They're your strawman, you built them, they have your name on them, you're the one saying them, and I won't give you any respect if you can't take ownership of your own creations.

They're yours. Not mine. There's not even a tenuous misreading of my words that even approaches the one you have.

So take the time to clean up your mess, rather than expect others to deal with it.

Own your silly beliefs. They're yours, and nobody else's.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

And yet you're not correcting me by specifically stating your beliefs. Thus rendering your argument non-falsifiable because it is so vague that it could mean almost anything.

I admitted that I could be wrong about your position in the previous post but pointed out that I can't be held accountable for such errors if you make no effort to clarify things.

As we see in your most recent post, you've still made no such effort and are now merely throwing off stupid insults.

Either clarify your position rendering your arguments falsifiable or you will concede by default for failing to offer a coherent and rational position.

Choice is yours. You can either define your position clearly enough that I can rip it to shreds while laughing at you OR you can cowardly refuse to explain yourself at which point you just surrender the field to your superior... me.

Its heads I win and tails you lose. Pick which ever one you want. Insects like you aren't even any fun... you're too stupid to put up a credible fight.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you're not correcting me by specifically stating your beliefs.

Because you're refusing to take ownership of your own fabrications.

The conditions were previously stated. I'll repeat them for you:

"But no such statement can be found in my review, so it is your silliness, please take ownership of it, and clean up the mess it has made of your own post.

Once you can post a reply devoid of such silliness, I'll consider engaging further with you. Failure to do so will only mean you're not capable of recognizing your responsibility for your own actions."

I was not kidding. Go back and post a reply devoid of such silliness. That's the condition for further engagement. Or continue to establish your inability to recognize what actions are yours. Nobody else owns them, they're entirely yours to deal with.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, you're lying. There is not one thing in your post that confirms you are intelligent or reasonable. There are PLENTY of things that point to you being an autistic, conceded, know-it-all though.

Re: But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Conceited is the word. Karmashock couldn't concede his own errors if the entire MLB umpire staff called a strike against him.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

And you decide to conclude with more baseless insults?

Very well. Your devolution into nothing more than another stupid zero contribution troll is your own choice.

You're an AC so that was likely to be expected. Most of the ACs appear to be trolls and sockpuppets. So that's fine.

I showed you respect and invited you to have a rational discussion. You responded with stupid insults.

So be it. Your forfeiture is accepted, fuck off.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

I actually did take responsibility and I pointed out that they were due to your own vagueness forcing me to infer and guess as to the meaning of your words. I then invited you to correct me specifically.

Until you do offer a falsifiable argument you have not in fact offered any argument or reasoning what so ever. And absent that, your entire presence in this thread is null.

I predict you'll continue to make more empty insults and continue to fail to make a rational argument about anything. Know that until you do, all further comments will be taken merely as whining at your own mental weakness and general inability to form a rational thought.

I find this pitiable though not especially uncommon. Also noteworthy is that you're another AC waste of oxygen. I rarely run into non-ACs that are utter voids of value. But with ACs it appears to be incredibly common. I've never understood why they let you comment at all without at least forcing you to use a fake name. For one thing who can tell you idiots apart? For another, you feel no obligation to represent yourself as anything but a troll because you've literally no reputation to protect.

You're garbage. Fuck off.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

You weren't forced to infer anything, let alone your silly beliefs about was said by me, or anybody else in this thread. That was a matter of choice on your part. Nobody has exerted any form of coercion upon you that has compelled such content from you. The only person writing your posts is you, and you chose to post your silly beliefs, nobody else made that choice. It was entirely within your control.

The conditions for further engagement were clearly stated after you stated your silly beliefs, and you have yet to produce a reply devoid of your own silliness. So therefore, you have willfully chosen not to be responsible for your own silliness. Thus what I'm choosing to do is repeat my condition to you. But you? You actually increase the silliness by claiming you're been forced to make such silly claims of your own fabrication by my words. Nope, you made them up with no basis in what was said, and you posted them. Nobody else did it. You did it.

So clean up your own mess. Post a reply devoid of your own silliness. The initial post I made is still waiting, you can choose to click reply, and you can choose to write a reply that doesn't contain any of your own silly beliefs. Or you can choose to fail to do so.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

If you don't elaborate then I have no choice but to try and guess what it is that you're actually talking about. So, no.

skimming through the rest to see if you defend argument... and you don't.

Your concession stands.

Better luck next time. Good day, sir.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, the requirement for further engagement is for you to reply with a post which is devoid of your own silliness.

Which you continue to fail to do of your own accord.

That's your choice. It's not like anybody else is going to post one for you. It's your own mess, deal with it on your own.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

As you haven't elaborated on any of your positions your arguments remain null.

Your concession stands.

Better luck next time. Good day, sir.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[bingoUV]

As to people eating fewer carbohydrates way back when... you do realize that the modern world was built by carbohydrates?...

Very long ago, say centuries ago, the physical activity levels were very high. Cars, computers, running water, writing, petroleum, even antibiotics and healthcare all together have reduced human body energy consumption levels hugely.

Not so long ago - say the US middle class in 1950s, rich people in India in 1890s - typically ate rich food. Because they could afford it. Which meant more fat, and proportionally less carbohydrate. These very people did much less physical activity than say the US poor people in 1910, or Indian poor people in 1890s who ate more carbohydrates. Foods were relatively suitable for their own lifestyle - carbs for work, and fat for sitting on your ass.

Fast forward to around 1990s and later - where people with least physical activity are eating the least fat.

You tell me. What sort of evidence would you like to see?

Dozens of my acquaintances, and hundreds of forum members I frequent who have reduced their own body fat by increasing proportion of dietary fat? Mediterranean diet?

There haven't been direct studies on it judging from pubmed, but at least studies indicating lack of correlation between proportion of dietary fat and blood cholesterol. This just dispels the usual bogies.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

Mediterranean diet?... you're saying Italians don't eat wheat?

Have you ever been to Italy... seen what they eat? Plenty of carbs my friend.

The Greeks tend to eat more lamb and veg. I assume that's what you're referring to... the Greeks aren't especially thinner than the Italians... and the Italians eat lots of carbs.

But lets have a look at the Chinese and the Japanese. I don't think people think of either society as being especially fat. The japanese I believe are known to be skinny if anything. And what do they eat a lot of ? Rice and noodles (mostly wheat noodles but they eat a lot of rice noodles as well).

Generally, I think the japanese especially eat less meat than most cultures. They eat a lot of veg of course but the rice and noodles are a huge portion of their calories.

Again, this is what kills me with this blanket carb hatred... WE BUILD THE MODERN WORLD ON CARBS!!!

literally every major culture sustained its population's diet to a large or even primary extent on a staple crop that are without exception carbs.

Wheat.
Rice.
Maze.
Potatoes.
And Poi.

Find me any sedentary culture of note in the world and I will show you their carb based staple crop.

Now that as a given because you know your history that well... exactly how can you say that carbs are so bad when we built the whole fucking modern world on them.

We are currently going through the information revolution. The carb thing is something we dealt with in the agricultural revolution. This is roughly the period of time when some societies became sedentary and learned to cultivate crops. And once they figured that out, they were able to vastly out compete rival hunter gatherer or nomadic herdsman tribes.

Now, if carbs were so fucking bad... then why did our carb eating ancestors kick the shit out of the palo diet hunter gatherers and whatever we'd call the diet of a nomadic herdsman?

The Pyramids: built by carbs.
The Great Wall of China: built by carbs.
The Parthenon: built by carbs.
The Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan: Built by carbs.

See a pattern here? The Egyptians were POUNDING carbs in their day. They had this very thick heavy beer like drink that was sort of like an ancient energy drink. It was basically slightly fermented liquid bread. Maybe think of it like a liquid sourdough bread? Anyway, they drank that stuff all the time. Were the egyptians fat?

Its exercise.

The people that say "exercise doesn't work" are talking about 15 to 30 minutes of exercise a day. When I say exercise, mean a hard day's work. Manual labor. Spend a day digging ditches, plowing a field without a tractor (using an animal is fine), or any of the millions of things people did way back when.

Now does this mean we need to eat less? Yes and no. The human body doesn't work very well if subjected to an extremely sedentary lifestyle. Simply reducing the food you eat or changing your diet isn't going to make you healthy. We evolved to move around, be out under the sun, etc. You put us inside all the time, not moving... and then you cut our food... the body reads that on an evolutionary level like winter. People huddling in caves because it is cold out and just waiting for better weather.

So the body goes into an energy conservation mode. The body stores as much energy as it can as fat because it thinks you're waiting out bad weather in a cave or something.

This is not a leap here. Every physiological response has a basis in our genetic history.

Try to see our lifestyle through the lens of evolution. It doesn't know why we're sitting around indoors. It just knows we are. And in our genetic past when would humans stay indoors not moving around much for long periods of time? Winter. And what is the appropriate response in that situation? See all those fat people the way that evolution sees them... they're like hibernating bears from the perspective of our genes. Yes, a hibernation that can last your whole life. The system isn't set up to assume cy

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[bingoUV]

Italians don't eat wheat

It is not about don't eat, it is about the proportion. Mediterranean diet traditionally has 40% calories coming from butter, cheese, cream and fish which are all low carb items. The low fat bandwagon foods have typically less than 5% calories from fat.

blanket carb hatred

There is no "carb hatred" in my post, and it is light years away from blanket carb hatred . People physically working very hard are not harmed much by carbohydrate consumption as I said clearly.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

I'm not pushing a low fat diet either you know. I was talking about exercise. Not fats versus carbs.

Obviously the ratios can matter but for most people that get fat, the issue is the amount of food they eat... PERIOD and the amount of exercise they get PERIOD.

The types of foods or types of exercise will matter but if your goal is merely to keep a healthy weight, the ratios don't matter that much so long as you don't do anything extreme.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[bingoUV]

the ratios don't matter that much so long as you don't do anything extreme.

But the food pyramid IS extremely low fat for sedentary people. The other heuristics adopted since 1970s are all extremely low fat - I recall one has something to do with plate. As soon as we go around 35-45% calories from fat, the "doing anything extreme" goes away, as most people starting balanced diet (which is a high-fat diet as per propaganda since 1970s) discover quickly.

So the AC here was pointing out this extreme high carbohydrate diet the US (and many other parts of the world too) is increasingly on, to which you didn't agree.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

No one cares about the fucking FDA food pyramid besides the government.

In your mind, do you think people are sitting at home figuring out their diet and thinking "well, according the food pyramid I need X percentage more of Y?"... No one gives a shit.

If you have a restaurant and they are trying to figure out a good meal to put on the menu, do you think they're consulting the food pyramid while they do it?

Then lets just accept that government's opinion on the matter isn't actually that relevant because people don't consult the FDA tables prior to making dinner.

As to the US having a higher amount of carbs than other societies, the asians eat a lot of Rice and noodles my friend... as do the indians. They're not fat. The Italians eat a lot of noodles and bread and they're not fat.

And as I keep pointing out to you, the Egyptians were pounding liquid bread during the days of the Old Kingdom and they weren't fat.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[bingoUV]

And as I keep pointing out to you, the Egyptians were pounding liquid bread

Repeating for the second time : People physically working very hard are not harmed much by carbohydrate consumption as I said clearly.

If you have a restaurant and they are trying to figure out a good meal to put on the menu, do you think they're consulting the food pyramid while they do it?

OK, so you have no clue about fat content in food before 1970s and the trend thereafter.

As to the US having a higher amount of carbs than other societies

Let me know where I said that.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[vakuona]

And most people are not bodybuilders.And I wouldn't call bodybuilders healthy either.

Individuals might be able to do enough exercise to burn off the excess food that you eat, but why do that (except to have a healthy level of physical activity)? If you are exercising just to get rid of the excess food, then maybe the most efficient way to go about it is to eat less. You should be eating enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle, not using exercise as a way to get rid of food you shouldn't have eaten in the first place.

For the amounts that most obese people eat, they are not going to be able to do enough exercise to get rid of the excess food. So they gain weight instead.

I have actually been to Japan, and one thing they don't do is to eat large quantities of food. Oh, and they don't eat over-cook either - the body doesn't expend as much energy digesting cooked food than it does raw food. You certainly don't get 2 litre sodas with your food in Japan. They eat much more healthily than in the west, and in shows in their waistlines.

And if you don't believe me, check this out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

It's quite obvious than, for example, Americans eat a lot more than the Japanese - about 34% more. is it any wonder the US is one of the most obese countries on the planet?

The average Japanese person also walks a lot more than the average American person, in part because they use public transport a lot more, and are much more likely to cycle to work etc.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

I actually was quite clear in my observation that body building was not the healthiest thing. My point was that they understand nutrition better than almost anyone. The empirical science conducted in those communities is extremely good. They are unhealthy because their objective is not health but bulk or strength. They're not trying to be healthy. They're trying to be BIG. And there is no group on earth that knows better how to get big than the body builders. Not your nutrition experts. Not your doctors.

The meat heads at the gym are experimenting on their bodies all the time and sharing their observations with each other on an ongoing basis.

And I've talked to them about these issues because I long ago had the realization that if anyone understood this sort of thing it would be them.

And according the body builders, you shift the balance of PROTEIN versus carbs depending on activity. A certain amount of fat is good for health but if your objective is to build muscle mass or burn weight, they say you want protein. Their belief is that it is just easier for the body to process proteins into proteins rather than to make proteins from fat or sugars. According them, if you give the body fat, the easiest thing for the body to do is turn it into fat. That said, they say that fat, protein, sugar will get turned into fat if you don't do any exercise.

As to the japanese walking more than we do, that in no way contradicts anything I said because I said the CHANGE was a reduction in the amount Americans moved around. So your citation of the japanese moving around more doesn't undermine my position at all. NOT EVEN A LITTLE TINY BIT. If anything you're validating my position.

Frankly, I think you're replaying an argument you had with someone else some time ago and I'm just the hapless fellow that is being subjected to your replay.

I'm not defending the fucking food pyramid. I find the whole concept of an organized food paradigm to be asinine. You're not my mother and I am not a child. You don't get to tell me what I eat.

And as to your complaint about Americans being fat... So what? Oh heart diseases and various other obesity related illnesses? What does that actually mean? We all die of something. Do obese people die a little faster than other sorts? Usually they do. Same thing with smokers etc. But what does it matter? Are they cutting their productive years short? No they're not. Fat people tend to live to be 70 or so which might be statistically five to ten years less than their thin peers. But are you honestly getting this excited over trying to keep a 70 year old alive until 80? This is a not a great social problem if that is the effect of it.

From a purely utilitarian perspective, what is your problem? Pretend I'm the alien overlord running this world... Explain to me why I give a shit?

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[vakuona]

You are going remarkably offtopic!

I did not discuss the food pyramid, proteins vs carbs, the amount of fat people should be eating etc. And I don't know of anyone forcing anyone to eat off a food pyramid. You are getting rather hysterical about that. And the bit about where I got my argument from, it's from my brain. It's called logic - try it some time.

Anyway, back on topic, the only point I made was that the prime cause of people being obese is them eating too much. Too much is _obviously_ relative.

You countered by saying this was because they do not do enough exercise. I disagreed, and showed you a chart showing, as an _EXAMPLE_, that Americans eat much more than the Japanese, and that - surprise surprise - they are more obese. In fact, so are the Brits and the Germans.

The point I made is pretty simple, one should not eat more than they need to, otherwise they become obese. If you become obese, it is because you are eating more than your body needs, and your body just stores the excess as fat. I think this is beyond obvious.

If you are a professional athlete your calories needs are obviously greater than those of an office worker. The solution isn't for the office worker to eat as much as a football player and then exercise as much. it is to eat less. The amount you eat should be informed by your energy needs.

This is the point that I was making, perhaps too subtly for you. I made the point that exercise is not a substitute for not over-eating. You shouldn't exercise to get rid of calories you shouldn't have eaten in the first place. You should exercise to remain healthy, and eat enough to allow a healthy amount of exercise. If you can't understand that last point, then there is no point discussing this further.

Re:But if it is a addictive...

[Karmashock]

As to statistics, I don't take statistics seriously unless I understand how they're taken and have audited the methodology of the statistic. I've seen too many bullshit statistics over the years to take any stat at face value unless it is very very simple and the methodology is effectively raw.

If there is any filtering or analysis in the statistic then I need to audit that.

So, how are they arriving at these numbers exactly?

I actually clicked on those links associated with that wiki page and found this in the Excel file:

""The food consumption refers to the amount of food available for human consumption as estimated by the FAO Food Balance Sheets. However the actual food consumption may be lower than the quantity shown as food availability depending on the magnitude of wastage and losses of food in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking, as plate-waste or quantities fed to domestic animals and pets, thrown or given away.""

That was something I found in the first 10 seconds of checking on this thing. So... your stats are already questionable because they're not even measuring consumption. I knew they couldn't possibly be because how could you possibly measure that? Are you sitting at my dinner table?

Anyway, the UN links on the wiki page are dead short of that excel file. That's not good. And the hunger map doesn't actually address the US at all. The US is cited as "not assessed" on that map.

Basically I think you're trying to turn the availability of food in my country into something we should be ashamed of... which is kind of funny. Nothing new though, we get blamed for being rich, and powerful. Why not blame us for being able to feed ourselves as well? I mean... lets just go completely Orwellian on this and say that Famine is Bounty or something.

Too funny. :D

I ignored your stats before because stats are so frequently bullshit that I tend to just ignore them by default. But if you want to poke me and force me to rip them to fucking shreds... so be it. *yawn*

As to just eating less, the human body doesn't respond well to that scenario. It slows the metabolism down, causes the body to shed muscle mass, and sends various evolutionary signals that you might be suffering through famine like conditions. Which means the body will ramp your energy levels down, prioritize fat creation, and generally make you into a fat piece of shit.

The best way to not be fat is to have an active metabolism. You don't need to be an Olympic athlete. You do need to have enough activity to keep the system running. If you stop moving and start eating fewer calories than you burn just by sitting on your ass... your body is going to assume you're in a famine and trigger all the emergency famine responses.

Understand WHAT you are... you are a product of millions of years of evolution. Understand that evolution is the silent partner in all these situations. What is the perspective of evolution in this situation?

Human beings having lots of food, doing nothing physically, and not being at any risk of ever running out of food is unprecedented in our genetic history. So our DNA is not going to read this situation accurately.

We don't fail to build muscle because the body NEEDS us to move to build muscle. We build muscle because we send an evolutionary signal to our bodies that we NEED the muscle and so energy is directed to build and maintain that muscle.

Genetically there is no reason why you couldn't have an eight pack without any exercise at all. You don't get that because the body doesn't like to waste resources on things that are not being used. That is all exercise really does in most cases. It communicates to the body that certain things are needed.

The general public tends to ignore warnings

[Thisstatementisfalse]

Alcohol and cigarettes have health warnings on them and people still buy these products. To think that most people know the differences between artificial sweeteners like sucralose and aspartame, and to believe that most people will not buy a product due to a belief that a particular sweetener is more harmful than another, is absolutely ludicrous.

Re:The general public tends to ignore warnings

[BasilBrush]

You're probably right that very few would bother to check what sweetner was used in a diet drink. But I've heard lots of people say they won't drink diet drinks because "Aspertame causes cancer" or just "Diet Pepsi is bad for you." With the implicit assumption that sugar is a natural product and therefore does you no harm. Despite the fact that sugar is actually one of the primary causes of sickness these days though complications of obesity and other effects.

Re:The general public tends to ignore warnings

[onthemightofprinces]

Yep, aspartame is 99.999% unlikely to cause cancer. Sugar is 100% guaranteed to make you fat and lead to heart problems.

taste...

[Mirar]

...I just think it taste bad. I rather have a cola with _no_ sweeteners.

Then again, the point of cola for me is sugar + caffeine. If I don't want that, I drink something else.

Re:taste...

[J053]

I only drink Diet Coke®, but only when cut with dark rum.

Wish they would just go back to using clyclamates

[Anonymous Coward]

safety first

Xylitol to the rescue?

[Twinbee]

Nice idea. Now instead of putting in teeth-rotting sugar or another weird tasting artificial sweetener, try Xylitol. Not only is it good for the teeth and health (less than 50% calories of sugar), but unlike most or all of the alternative sweeteners, it also TASTES like real sugar. I bought some for myself to put on cereal, and also unlike other sweeteners, it doesn't have that bitter aftertaste.

I bought this one from the UK, but for the US, this one looks good.

Only a small percentage of people find trouble with it (it can have a laxative affect if you take too much for the first few days). Still 4.8/5 from 106 reviews (no 1 or 2 star) is mightily impressive if you ask me.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[bigfinger76]

The spelling of that chemical alone will prevent its success.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[bluefoxlucid]

1g of Xylitol is enough to kill 3 dogs in half an hour. It's the kind of stuff most people can't keep in their house. If you spill your soda, your dog runs over, laps at it, and then is dead in half an hour.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Twinbee]

That didn't stop aspartame from becoming a success though. Besides, it can always be rebranded, just like blood oranges are now often called 'blush' or 'ruby red' oranges.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Healthier than sugar AND kills dogs? Two birds with one stone!

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Just Some Guy]

1g of Xylitol is enough to kill 3 dogs in half an hour.

That is the oddest mortality unit I've heard in a long time.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, but the consumers don't have to know that. Plus, if a few dogs die, who cares? It's worth avoiding the health effects of other sweeteners.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume this is why it's a big thing in chewing gum, but not really anywhere else.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be callous, but train your pets. And clean up your spills promptly. In general, don't let them eat/drink any human food.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbonated water + slightly sweetened soy creamer + lime juice.

mmmmmmm...........

The protein in the soy creamer helps reduce the glycemic index.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[bluefoxlucid]

It is, but it's an important consideration: if you drop a piece of xylitol gum, and your dog eats it, your dog will be dead in half an hour. Their body will massively store glucose, causing fatal hypoglycemia. Your dog won't get sick and die slowly; it will die quickly.

Mushroom poisoning can take several days to kill a human. A small amount introduced one time will make you sick for a week, during which time your liver and kidneys may fail. Xylitol poisoning will simply kill your dog, quickly, possibly before you can reach a vet to get an $800 glucose IV.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the sugar alcohols I've ever used (*itol, fuckitol excluded) have given me headaches. "Diet" hard candies with malitol are the worst.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[msobkow]

It also happens to give me a wicked case of the shits.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Air-conditioned cowh]

1g of Xylitol is enough to kill 3 dogs in half an hour. It's the kind of stuff most people can't keep in their house. If you spill your soda, your dog runs over, laps at it, and then is dead in half an hour.

If you drop your chocolate bar and the dog eats it. Same story.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[rubycodez]

So marketers can make a wonderful-sounding name for it and problem solved

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[bluefoxlucid]

I've watched a dog eat a half a bag of chocolate peanut butter cups, vomit, then be miserable for days. A dog eating a chocolate bar isn't nearly as fatal as you'd think.

Chocolate is like if you inhaled gasoline fumes. Xylitol for a dog is like if you inhaled Sarin nerve gas.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Twinbee]

Do you have a source for that? I knew it was bad, very bad even, but that's really pushing it.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[markdavis]

And yet sucralose also doesn't rot teeth, also tastes just like sugar, isn't dangerous to pets, doesn't cost much, has no calories, is stable at all normal temps, and doesn't pose a danger to phenylketonurics. Up until now, the ONLY national soda that has used it (and has for many years now) is RC (Diet Rite). I am glad to see Pepsi changing.

Monkfruit and stevia are both more natural and promising, but they don't taste like sugar (especially not stevia).

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Bathroom Humor]

Are those 3 metric dogs? If not, how do we convert it?
And how can we incorporate furlongs into this measurement?

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chocolate also kills dogs relatively fast. Were they doing a study on this or something?

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[TeknoHog]

The spelling of that chemical alone will prevent its success.

If 'xylitol' is hard for English speakers, it should be doubly so in Finland. We did extensive clinical research on its use against dental caries in the 1970s, and now everyone and, well, not their dog, has been using it in forms like chewing gum for a couple of decades.

However, we are notoriously bad at pronouncing foreign words. For instance, initial 'str' in words like 'strategy' ('strategia' in Finnish) is often reduced to just 'r', at least when spoken by older people with less foreign exposure. This just reflects the lack of such combinations in our native language.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do the other two dogs die? Do they lick the first one?

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Smurf]

You are right in that xylitol is extremely toxic to dogs, but the dosage you mention is way off. In this study, for example, they gave 1 or 4 grams of xylitol per kg of weight to 12 adult Pekingese dogs. Since adult Pekingeses weight around 4.5 kg, that means that six of the dogs in the study received around 18 grams of xylitol. (Six other dogs received the lower dose, and six more were controls who received distilled water; the abstract is misleading as it suggests that all 18 dogs received xylitol).

All of the dogs who got xylitol showed significant effects, in several cases very severe. But... none of them died.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

IS this effect shown in humans? That's the problem with testing on mice, monkeys, and dogs. They might be close to human function but they aren't human. I am just not gonna eat any of that garbage myself. I'll stick with real sugar. For now I shall just go around scaring everyone into not buying it because it kills dogs just like I have regarding sucralose and it's similarity to bleach.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[tehcyder]

It also happens to give me a wicked case of the shits.

So it is definitely a diet aid.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[PPalmgren]

Based on the name, this is a sugar alcohol? (-itol suffix like Maltitol). Sugar alcohols cause extremely negative intestinal and stomach reactions from many people. A lot of the protein meal replacement bars use sugar alcohols and a significant percentage of consumers can't eat them for that reason. See also sugar free life savers, which have been giving people fits for ages.

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, Xylitol has been guinea pig... I mean, HUMAN tested for past 40 years or so in Finland. Due to a manufacturing process being discovered over there, it has been considered bit of a National Sweetener compound, and used in all kinds of things and even getting preferential tax treatment (until EU forced govt to end that).
So unless you considered swedo-phobia to be a serious side-effect the stuff seems harmless enough.

RIOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

PEPSI IS BETTER THAN COKE.

bring back cyclamates

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said

I'd rather see "Now - with Sucrose"

[davidwr]

Ditch the corn syrup - it just isn't same as sucrose.

If it did, there wouldn't be a market for the occasionally-available "throwback" version that does have sucrose.

Re:I'd rather see "Now - with Sucrose"

[Overzeetop]

Yeah, not really.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (typ when used in soda) 55% fructose and 42% glucose. Sucrose is 50% fructose and 50% glucose - that's what actually hits your system once your stomach separates the disaccaride into its constituent monosaccaride parts.

The taste is slightly different - there's no doubt - but metabolically you would have to ingest way more sugar (of any type) than you should in a decent daily routine in order to have any sort of unbalancing effect from the slightly shifted mix.

Oh, and beware of most fruits/fruit juices - they can be 80% or higher in fructose/glucose ratio.

High Frutose are

[denisbergeron]

a lot more dangerous or health than anything else. It's the first cause of diabetic-2

Get rid of all artificial sweeteners...

[Anonymous Coward]

All artificial sweeteners have issues. #1 is that they raise the insulin resistance in type II diabetics. That's right, artificial sweeteners are bad for diabetics.

You can find multiple instances where artificial sweeteners lead to altzheimers, parkinsons and certain kinds of cancers.

There's a natural substitute for table sugar, called Tagatose.
Normal sugar is right-handed, ie, the molecule is spun a certain way, and our digestive tract have evolved to process only right-handed sugars.
Left handed sugars (mirror-image) of right handed sugars often pass through the digestive tract without being processed.
This means that most bodies will get no boost in blood sugar levels by consuming foods and drinks sweetened with Tagatose.
Tagatose can be mass produced by processing whey.

Pseudo science fucktards

[AndyKron]

The pseudo science fucktards win again. Fuck them, and fuck religion while I'm at it.

Re:Pseudo science fucktards

[gregsmac]

But I read a three paragraph article....well skimmed it anyway.....I thought I was informed enough to talk about......damn

Also Now Vaccination-Free!!!

[EmagGeek]

They need to put that on the can, too!

Fatburger

[phorm]

Yes, or as my server friend commented on after a late night shift:

A fairly large lady comes in with a friend after a night at the bar. She orders the double-decker cheeseburger, poutined fries with gravy, and a side of apple pie. Then she asks for a "diet coke" and comments "I'm trying to lose weight"

Taste

[Dwedit]

I find that drinks sweetened with Sucralose just taste better than drinks sweetened with Aspartame, so I think this is a good move.

Re:Taste

[rwa2]

Weird... I never worried about anything I ingest. But Sucralose / Splenda was the first thing that I ever drank that gave me an instant headache (and I almost never get headaches), and now I go out of my way to make sure that the stuff I buy doesn't have it in the ingredients list.

Re:Taste

[drinkypoo]

Weird... I never worried about anything I ingest. But Sucralose / Splenda was the first thing that I ever drank that gave me an instant headache

Are you sure it didn't also have Acesulfame K?

I can taste aspartame right off, yuck. Never felt anything weird from it myself. But I still prefer sucralose, I've never felt anything weird from it either. I used a whole lot of it last time I was on the Atkins diet. My lady is afraid of it so we use stevia, and now monk fruit extract. When they bother to fill their shelves, Safeway now carries it without sugar, as a liquid. It's got some preservatives, of course, even though it sits on the shelf for about a picosecond.

What's the biochemistry of this?

[swb]

What's the biochemistry associated with aspartame or sucralose and an insulin response?

AFAIK, artificial sweeteners trick the tongue into tasting sweet but don't contain the chemistry (namely sugar) to induce an insulin response.

Now, that doesn't mean it couldn't happen (insert complex biochemistry here) and I wonder if there is possibly some kind of adaptive learned response associated with the taste of something sweet triggering it, sort of like a Pavlovian response. Or maybe there is some indirect connection with our taste buds and our insulin response -- it's not hard to see where taste and an instantaneous biological response would be beneficial, either in helping us reject poisons or in making some foods more quickly absorbed.

It also makes me wonder if could be un-learned -- if a person never ate anything sweet tasting that had sugars, would the body stop associating the taste of something sweet with an insulin response if there wasn't a corresponding increase in blood sugar?

Awesome!

[Lumpy]

When is pepsi going to make their cola taste good?

Why do all diet drinks taste vile

[SuperKendall]

It seems like no matter what they use in diet drinks, all of them have a pretty horrific aftertaste that I get after just one sip.

Instead of diet drinks, I mostly drink water or just less soda. I used to drink a ton of soda but now half a can is enough for me - do be afraid to just throw out half a cup or can. It's just soda.

Re:Why do all diet drinks taste vile

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like no matter what they use in diet drinks, all of them have a pretty horrific aftertaste that I get after just one sip.

I agree, I can't stand the "Zero" sodas either. And there shouldn't be much of a taste difference between HTFS and regular table sugar (it's just a difference of ratios, no actual molecular difference) but a lot of "throwback" sodas with cane sugar don't taste as good to me as well. There has to be more differences in the formulas that just the sweetener me thinks.

Re:Why do all diet drinks taste vile

[markdavis]

>It seems like no matter what they use in diet drinks, all of them have a pretty horrific aftertaste that I get after just one sip.

You have not tried Sucralose, then, because it tastes closer to sugar than just about anything else. But it wouldn't surprise me if you haven't tasted anything else, because 99+% of non-sugar sodas available use aspartame.

Up until now, the ONLY national soda that has used sucralose (and has for many years now) is RC (Diet Rite). I am glad to see Pepsi changing.

Like you, I drink mostly water, but I do have a Diet Rite maybe once a day. Oh, and Diet Rite also has no sodium and no caffeine.

Re:Why do all diet drinks taste vile

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. However, I like having something cold and lightly sweetened to drink... I'd be happy if someone made a soda that has, say 1/3 of the "normal" amount of sugar. I make a 16oz coffee in the morning...I add two sugars = 30 kcal. Somehow a 12oz soda needs 150 kcal of sugar!? The major soda makers have made "reduced sugar" sodas, but what they really do is replace the sugar with a similar part of an artificial sweetener.

Facts behind the aspartame controversy

[neghvar1]

Aspartame does change to formaldehyde due to body heat. However, formaldehyde is required for proper metabolism and our body produces two enzymes which can break down the formaldehyde. The dangers of aspartame involve consuming aspartame faster than your body is able to break it down. To begin to suffer the effects of aspartame (formaldehyde poisoning) would require the consumption of approximately 50mg of aspartame per kilogram of body weight. So for me, I would have to consume about 60 cans of diet cola ) per day to feel the effects of formaldehyde poisoning. (1 12oz. can of diet coke: 125 mg) Results may vary based on metabolism speed and body weight.

Ehh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm willing to be 99% of the people who drink pepsi don't even know what Aspartame is to begin with...
Also, I do believe it has more to do with the fact that Diet cola, be it Pepsi, Coke or any other... plainly taste disgusting, than this.

Still Acesulfame K (yuk!)

[billstewart]

Aspartame doesn't taste as bad to me as saccharin did, but it's still bad, and the soda companies usually use acesulfame K as well, which tastes far worse (but doesn't break down as quickly as aspartame.) Unfortunately, Pepsi's keeping the acesulfame K in their recipe, so it'll still taste bad.

When I want diet soda, I drink iced tea. Tastes better, and restaurants give you refills. (And if it's bad iced tea, you can add lemon and sugar.)

Re:Still Acesulfame K (yuk!)

[bill_mcgonigle]

yeah, and it's probably carcinogenic.

I've got a nasty Diet Cola habit, but switched from Pepsi to Sam's after Pepsi started adding ace-K. It's not hard to calculate a dose of aspartame that your liver enyzmes can handle but there's no safe-ish dose of ace-K.

Oh, and the whole "aspartame makes you fat" meme is bullshit - I've dropped 45 lbs in the past year by getting rid of nearly all the carbs in my diet, all while drinking the stuff. An over-abundance of carbs is what horks your insulin system.

A sweetener that is proven to be incredibly dangerous, though: sugar, especially HFCS. It causes the largest health crisis the country has ever seen and innumerable downstream morbidities. Most articles about artificial sweeteners tend to "gloss over" that part.

A huge number of Americans self-medicate on caffeine (the drug they should be on is probably illegal or guarded behind the nearly impenetrable veil of the AMA's psychiatric guild). But encouraging them to drink their caffeine with sugar is the worst possible idea. Ace-K is probably carcinogenic, but once you've got some cancer cells, to really make them happy, fill them with fructose - Pepsi's got what cancer craves!

Re:Still Acesulfame K (yuk!)

[billstewart]

Sorry, you're not getting my caffeine until you pry my cold dead fingers off the coffee cup.

The other sweetener I've seen showing up in sodas lately has been stevia. I normally avoid the stuff like the plague - tastes worse to me than aspartame does, though in a rotting-organic-bad way rather than a metallic-fake way. Maybe cola flavors can mask that, though.

Re:Still Acesulfame K (yuk!)

[drinkypoo]

The other sweetener I've seen showing up in sodas lately has been stevia. I normally avoid the stuff like the plague - tastes worse to me than aspartame does, though in a rotting-organic-bad way rather than a metallic-fake way. Maybe cola flavors can mask that, though.

No, no they can not. Cola in particular is horrible with Stevia. However, Zevia's Ginger Ale and Ginger Root Beer (which really just tastes like root beer) are both very good. I have been somewhat nauseated by their other flavors, so while this may be subjective, at least I'm discriminating.

Always the same thing

[GuB-42]

- Unpopular substance X is used
- Scientists discover substitute Y
- Y is tested safe and approved by the FDA
- Companies massively use Y so that they can advertize "X-free" products
- Out of the now millions of consumers, a few of them develop conditions that appear to be caused by Y
- No matter how real the problem is, the information spreads wildly and Y become unpopular
- Repeat the process with Y as the new X

Re:Always the same thing

[PRMan]

I can double blind a migraine from aspartame for you all day long, if you like.

Re:Always the same thing

[GuB-42]

Assuming no mistake, I guess you are somehow intolerant to aspartame.
The thing is : for almost every substance, someone will be found intolerant. And I'm not just talking about chemicals, after all, diabetics can't handle regular sugar normally.
Except that intolerances like this may not show up during testing, only when the product is out in the market for millions of people to consume. And of course, a substance that make some people sick, even if it is one in a million, will get bad PR.
As a result, companies will stop using it (a good thing for intolerant people) but they will also replace it with another substance that will probably make other people sick, and the cycle repeats again.

My opinion is that we should stop sweetening everything : no sugar, HFCS, aspartame, sucralose, stevia, etc... Learn to appreciate tastes more complex than the sweetness we are hardwired to love like an addictive drug. It won't completely solve the problem but it would be a great step forward. And we should promote variety too.

Will Rumsfeld lose money?

[bussdriver]

Donald Rumsfeld had stock in it, having run the company behind it back before he was appointed to approve it's use without proper testing. (Testing which happened later on - a lot of which was industry funded etc.)

Some people are extra susceptible to the stuff in addition to certain conditions such as heavy exercise making your tolerance level drop.

What we really should know is how they were involved in corruption behind the stevia ban. Also what it took other industries to bribe away that ban in recent years...

Re:Will Rumsfeld lose money?

[Bonzoli]

Look up "how aspartame became legal" and Rumsfeld, perhaps find the time line also.
The original studies were not cited and all the FDA doctors were going to ban it again before being replaced by Reagan on request from Rumsfeld.
A president with failing mental capacity and memory. All types of crazy shit happened under him. Wait till we normalize relations with Iran and the West finds out why those 52 captive Americans didn't get released until the day after he was elected. If you have any sense you wont eat anything with aspartame, funded studies are fail, ask the Bee's or Climate change experts.

Re:Will Rumsfeld lose money?

[Anonymous Coward]

A retired scientist I know, that had worked for an company funded study of a certain cola drink, studied if their drink was safe for pregnant women to drink and to not cause birth defects... The company funded study found that the drink actually did cause birth defects! Where's the link to this real study? No where, because it's "company funded"! Anyone who really knows about it can't say anything because of the NDA they signed.

It's all about the dosage

[Prune]

Aspartame and a few of the other artificial sweeteners are excitotoxic (they overexcite some neurons to the point of death). For example, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... and other research like it. The main counterargument is that studies showing excitotoxic effects in vivo have always been done with doses significantly higher than would be ingested using regular consumption of foodstuffs in which artificial sweeteners are used (indeed, a benefit of advanced artificial sweeteners is that they reach the threshold of sweetness when very dilute). While even a good deal of overconsumption of artificially sweetened soda drinks may not reach the amounts having been shown detrimental. However, I've found no safety evidence either way regarding very long term exposure at lower intensity, over decades. For me, that's cause for caution and limiting consumption (though even I don't totally avoid it, and that's from someone that doesn't particularly like the taste of soda drinks).

Re:It's all about the dosage

[Prune]

I forgot to mention an important consideration: one also has to take into account the tradeoff compared to using lots of sugar/glucose/HFCS/etc. While, optimally, intake from both groups should be restricted, I know that's not realistic for many people. I'm lucky in that my metabolism and insulin sensitivity allow me to handle large quantities of the high glycaemic index foods I love, but if you also have a sweet tooth -- depending on your genetics -- the artificial sweeteners may be the lesser evil.

Re:It's all about the dosage

[PRMan]

Many people believe that excitotoxins are the reason for the rise in Alzheimer's. Given how they affect the brain chemistry, there may be something there. In any event, Alzheimer's IS rising, and the rise of MSG and Aspartame use in the US would explain the timeframes.

Re:It's all about the dosage

[Anonymous Coward]

excitotoxicity is accute. Not reaching that level is what we call "stimulating" and does not cause harm, instead such substances tend to improve long term mental functioning. There is no such thing as excitotoxicity caused by sub-excitotoxicity doses over a long term, it doesn't even make sense.

Re:It's all about the dosage

[Anonymous Coward]

but GP didn't claim it's the excitotoxicity that's the long term concern, it just says long term exposure at lower intensity of the substances, not long term accumulation of lower excitotoxicity. if you look at these chemicals, they have other side effects besides just excitotoxicity

I prefer the taste of the diet soft drinks

[sjbe]

Dangerous smangerous. I don't drink diet because it tastes terrible.

Depends on your taste buds. Once you drink diet for a while the regular stuff tastes a bit weird. I have trouble finishing a regular can of coke.

Plus the amount of sugar in the normal stuff is ridiculous. I think they should start selling a free insulin shot with every case. Basically you are literally picking your poison.

obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

https://xkcd.com/641/

Pepsi ditching aspartame for different reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pepsi (I believe it was them) had already changed the sweetener of their diet drinks from 100% aspartame to a mixture of aspartame and Acesulfame K a few years back. The reason they gave for the switch is that aspartame breaks down in the heat, and some of their product was being stored in warm or hot settings, making the sweetener break down. When the customer bought that product and drank it, it tasted terrible.

Acesulfame K is far more heat stable, and adding it to the mix meant the product survived in better shape when it got to the customer.

The fact that they are now eliminating the aspartame completely and claiming it is for health reasons rings pretty hollow. They wanted to get rid of it all along for the reason I gave above, but probably couldn't do it all at once because the product's flavor would change too drastically, and now they can do so and market it as a health move. Very clever.

McDonalds nutrition

[sjbe]

When I go to mac donalds, I get a hamburger and a diet soda (I don't really care for the fries).
Makes sense for me, a 500-600 calorie meal. I't a nice lunch, tastes good (all beef, even MCD, is awesome this side of the world), and even has lettuce and tomato.

A standard McDonalds hamburger does not come with lettuce and tomato. Catsup, mustard, pickle, minced onions. Has 240 calories.

In your example, that double big mac has 700 calories.

A Big Mac has 530 calories. Not sure what a double Big Mac is since it isn't a standard part of McDonald's menu. By itself a Big Mac is fine now and then but people rarely eat just a Big Mac. Usually they have some fries and a sugar loaded soft drink too. This easily can get the meal over 1000 calories as you mention which is about half the daily caloric intake for an adult male.

Not a diet meal, but not that excessive. It even has a lot of lettuce, which is good against blood sugar spikes, esp. a good thing for most fat people.

No burger sold by McDonalds has "a lot of lettuce". It has at most a small piece (possibly shredded) the size of the bun. That is not a lot of lettuce using any reasonable definition of the word "lot". Furthermore to get enough fiber to actually affect blood sugar levels you would have to eat several cups of the stuff, far more than is in any McDonalds burger.

Re:McDonalds nutrition

[orasio]

When I go to mac donalds, I get a hamburger and a diet soda (I don't really care for the fries).
Makes sense for me, a 500-600 calorie meal. I't a nice lunch, tastes good (all beef, even MCD, is awesome this side of the world), and even has lettuce and tomato.

A standard McDonalds hamburger does not come with lettuce and tomato. Catsup, mustard, pickle, minced onions. Has 240 calories.

Notice the word "I". When _I_ go, I have a hamburger (type not specified) and a diet soda (also not specified).

The hamburger I get is a McNifica, which, does have lettuce and tomato, alongside a largish patty. Looked it up, 541 kcal (http://www.mcdonalds.com.ar/mcnifica).

In your example, that double big mac has 700 calories.

A Big Mac has 530 calories. Not sure what a double Big Mac is since it isn't a standard part of McDonald's menu. By itself a Big Mac is fine now and then but people rarely eat just a Big Mac. Usually they have some fries and a sugar loaded soft drink too. This easily can get the meal over 1000 calories as you mention which is about half the daily caloric intake for an adult male.

You are missing the point at "usually". The GP was complaining about fat people _omitting_ the sugar, effectively keeping the caloric below insane ranges.

Re:McDonalds nutrition

[master_kaos]

Which is why you go with the diet soda, so it isnt over 1000 calories. That diet soda saves you a couple hundred calories that can be used for weightloss or other food.
Another thing -- eating adequate amount of protein is important during weight loss to minimize muscle loss and keep it mostly fat loss. That is one advantage of being overweight, is I have plenty lower body muscle from lugging my fat ass around all day for the past 20 years, so now during my weight loss I can focus more on upper body.

Re:McDonalds nutrition

[drinkypoo]

The hamburger I get is a McNifica

I stopped eating at Denny's because I refused to say "Moons over my Hammy". McNifica? Where is your dignity, man? Oh, wait, you're eating at McDonalds. Carry on, I suppose.

Betty Martini wins!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

A great deal of the public concerns about aspartame are due to an infamous troll named "Betty Martini". By spewing her nonsensical, unfounded claims into so very many different venues, she's convinced many people that where there is so much smoke, there must be fire. Her web site is at http://www.mpwhi.com/our_found..., and her photo there depict her, correctly, as a the kind of ill-informed trailer-trash wannabe that make real science and medicine so hard, and populate the ranks of Fox News fans. Among her silliness is that "brain cancers are made of formaldehyde from aspartame" and "cellulite is made from formaldehyde". This entirely ignores the fact that formaldehyde is water soluble and would dissolve away rather than form lumps of any kind.

Betty Martini is to aspartame what the Scientology front group "Citizens Commission on Human Rights" is to psychiatry. They're nut jobs, collecting and twisting every possible scare story into a nonexistent secret agenda of abuse and power and interpreting any real concerns into complete negative nonsense. And she's been at this for *decades*.

Aspartame? Who cares, what about Phosphoric Acid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is proven linked to kidney problems!? They won't remove something that is actually dangerous but will remove something proven repeatedly harmless??

Well

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

Since Mountain Dew Throwback also goes back to the more citrus formula of the 60's you might have another reason for the taste difference

Mmmm . . . aspartame

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1985 my girlfriend and I would ride to work together. She won a contest and won 2 two-liter bottles of Diet Coke from 7-11 for a year. So we would stop and get the diet coke on the way to work. The free diet coke only lasted a year and the girlfriend not much longer, but I am still drinking diet coke. Best. Marketing. Ever. I like diet coke. I like the way it tastes. I've cut down a bit over the years, but if they want to study the effects of 25 years of aspartame they ought to look me up.

I've read a lot of posts about the biology of whether aspartame is good or bad for you. Wrong science. The relevant sciences are marketing, economics, and law. Pepsi doesn't care whether it is good for you or not. They care whether they are in regulatory compliance, they care what people want, and they care about making money off selling it to them.

Okay, I stretched the definition of science, there, but in defense of the economists, they do call it the dismal science. And friends don't let friends drink pepsi.

Also it is a lot of calories, and empty ones

[Sycraft-fu]

Soda has around 100 calories per 8 fluid ounces (varies slightly with type of soda). So you get a 32 ounce drink, that's 400 calories. That's a fair bit, even by fast food standards. Most fast food burgers are in the 800-1200 calorie range (a double quarter pounder with cheese is 740 calories for reference). So you are adding 33-50% more calories to a meal with a 32oz soda.

Well the thing is, the calories in that soda won't do much if anything to fill you up. Drink as much as you like, you still feel hungry. Not so with a hamburger. While it isn't high quality nutrition, it is still plenty of protein, fat, and carbs and your body is going to be satisfied by the consumption of it.

Thus cutting out the soda really can help. You reduce a non-trivial amount of calories and it isn't likely to make you feel less full. Ya, you are still eating fast food and it is not high quality nutrition, and it is high calorie for what you get, but it is better than just drinking sugar water which is more or less what soda is.

Weight loss and eating healthy isn't an all or nothing proposition. There is better and worse, and cutting out soda is doing better than leaving it in.

my aspartame allergy vs sucralose conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

I react to aspartame (difficulty swallowing, spike in blood pressure), so I avoid it. I'm glad if it were used less. Saccharin doesn't seem to bother me, it's very bitter tasting and it might cause bladder cancer, but I can at least enjoy a TAB.

What worries me if that Sucralose is ending up in everything. Sure, making sugar free products with sucralose makes sense. But I find it in plenty of things that already include corn syrup or sugar. Why? It tastes terrible and reducing a 120 calorie ice tea to 80 calories seems kind of pointless, when you could learn to drink a third less or perhaps drink something less sweet.

My guess is that sucralose is cheaper than sugar, because far less of it is needed. And that's how it's ending up in everything.

Left-handed sugar

[RoccamOccam]

Many years ago, I read in Omni Magazine (a source to be trusted, for sure) of a breakthrough that was dubbed "Left-handed sugar". The claim was that some lab had produced a compound that was essentially the same as regular sugar, but in some fashion, it's molecular arrangement was a mirror-image. The trick of it was that the taste buds thought it was sugar, but the digestive system would ignore it.

For years, I expected to hear about some real product; but I guess that I was fooled.

Re:Left-handed sugar

[RoccamOccam]

Responding to myself, I guess the original article that I had read was talking about tagatose

Tagatose is a low carbohydrate functional sweetener, very similar to fructose in structure. It is naturally occurring and can be found in some dairy products. Tagatose has a physical bulk similar to sucrose or table sugar and is almost as sweet. However, it is metabolized differently, has a minimal effect on blood glucose and insulin levels and furthermore provides a prebiotic effect. Tagatose is especially suitable as a flavor enhancer or as a low carbohydrate sweetener.

I wonder why it's not more popular.

Re:Left-handed sugar

[drinkypoo]

I wonder why it's not more popular.

what I gather from having read up on it just now is that it's not especially inexpensive to produce. Still, if it's everything it claims to be, I'd pay something of a premium for it over sugar...

Re:Left-handed sugar

[tehcyder]

I wonder why it's not more popular.

As a wild guess, because it can't be trademarked.

Contradict much?

[Anonymous Coward]

...the switch to sucralose will not impact the taste of these drinks, but we should expect a “slightly different mouthfeel.”

That funny, different feeling in your mouth? That's called taste.

Interesting since Aspartame spiked Sachirine

[Maxo-Texas]

Basically funded bogus studies and had a negative press campaign as they came out.

Sacharine-- it turns out-- is actually quite safe while aspartame is bad for some people regardless of how it is handled. Handled improperly (over 100 degrees) it breaks down into bad stuff... but also many people break it down into bad stuff anyway and get headaches from it.

Re:Interesting since Aspartame spiked Sachirine

[Mike Van Pelt]

Saccharine has this horrible nasty bitter taste to me. Aspartame is better, but still not great. The Diet Mountain Dew that I drink mass quantities of has acesulfame and sucralose in it, and it tastes ... not too bad. I've gotten used to it, anyway.

Stevia is, to me, the best tasting of the non-calorie sweeteners, and I use it in my coffee, and in my homemade grape soda. (Sodastream CO2 water, a few ounces of grape juice, and stevia.) I'm not sure why it hasn't caught on as a sweetener for sodas. Does it break down in the can like aspartame does? (Over-the-hill aspartame sweetened sodas are unspeakably nasty.)

Re:Interesting since Aspartame spiked Sachirine

[JustNiz]

I really tried with stevia since it at least superficially seemed to be the way to go weight-wise, but i just couldn't get used to its nasty taste. I couldn't find one use for it where even a little didn't badly screw up whatever I put it in (Tea, coffee, cooking, etc.).

Re:Interesting since Aspartame spiked Sachirine

[flargleblarg]

Stevia is, to me, the best tasting of the non-calorie sweeteners, and I use it in my coffee, and in my homemade grape soda.

I prefer stevia as well. But I find that I only like it in my tea and not in my coffee (although I used to like sugar in my coffee just fine). Out of curiosity, which brand of stevia do you like best? Maybe I need to switch.

Re:Interesting since Aspartame spiked Sachirine

[Maxo-Texas]

I'm not a bitter taster so they all work for me.

I use a mixture of multiple artificial sweeteners in my coffee. Some sacharine and a little stevia. Sometimes some monk fruit sugar. Some times some xylitol or erythritol.

To many people stevia tastes horrible.

Re:Interesting since Aspartame spiked Sachirine

[Mike Van Pelt]

I use the "Safeway Kitchens" store brand in my coffee at work. There's a bottle of some organonaturaopathicholistical type stuff I got on sale at Whole Pay^H^H^H Foods a while back that's also pretty good; that's what I'm using at home at the moment. If it's still on sale when I run out, I might get some more of it, or the Safeway store brand if it's cheaper per use.

I wonder if reaction to stevia is genetically based, like the whole cilantro thing.

Mexican Coke, or Canadian | anything but American

[CrashNBrn]

We get a case of Mexican Coke from Costco periodically - although they had cases with 1/2: Coke 1/2: Sprite + Fanta Orange. Most non-Juice "drinks" in any given grocery store here in the States (except for maybe Whole Foods, and Trader Joes) are either artificial sweetners or HFCS.

Pepsi dropping Aspartame? Not in Canada!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, to the point (for my location): I emailed Pepsi Canada last Friday. I received a response, today (Monday). Basically, Pepsi Canada said that since Diet Pepsi is the largest-selling diet cola in Canada - they ain't changing a thing. That Splenda switch they'll be doing in the States does not extend into Canada. As to why I prefer Spenda - I hate the bitter after-taste in drinks with Aspartame. Pop with Splenda, my taste-buds are happy with. Just give me a high-caffeine cola (as much as the top coffees have), with no sugar, that tastes OK & I'll be happy. I NEED my caffeine, I do NOT need sugar (I want it, I just don't need it).

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so Diet Pepsi was sweetened with Aspartame, and Pepsi Max was sweetened with Sucralose (Splenda) why didn't the babies who had a problem with diet Pepsi just drink Max? BTW Sucralose IMHO is worse for one than Aspartame. That said I don't drink any artificial sweeteners. I prefer regular sugar, not HFCS for me either.

Switched to diet soda, lost 10 pounds

[wikthemighty]

When I first switched to diet soda, with no other change in food/exercise, I lost 10 pounds in about a year.

they are losing sales to generic sodas

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a pespi drinker. When I lost my job I had to drink "sams choice" soda from wallmart. It's 90 cents compared to pepsi's $1.75. Now I drink sams choice because I think it tastes better.

Replying anon because my medical history isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

your business. But I have Multiple Sclerosis and my old neurologist told me to avoid anything with artificial sweeteners and aspartame specifically. FYI, fatigue and vertigo are things I experience regularly without ever drinking any artificial sweeteners.

CAPTCHA: pharmacy

Bye Aspartame! Hello something worse!

[Chas]

Seriously. That's all that's happening here. Pepsi's going to move on to another sweetener that's probably worse for you than Aspartame.

Now if only they'd go back to cane sugar

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's hoping they go back to real cane sugar and stop using that corn-syrup shit.

Only in North America

[Z00L00K]

Other parts of the world will still have Aspartame as sweetener.

Sucrose question

[JustNiz]

I think I'm proably like a lot of (non-diabetic) Europeans in that I mentally lump aspartame, sucralose, splenda, corn syrup, saccharin, MSG and all other man-made sweeteners into the same "big money is covering these up as a direct cause of serious health issues" category, and sucrose into a "not great, but way better than anything artificial" category.

My question is: Is my paranoia scientifically justified?

Re:Sucrose question

[ledow]

"Aspartame has been found to be safe for human consumption by more than ninety countries worldwide, with FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut""

So.... no. Probably not. But judging by the comments on here, you're not alone.

Have sugar. If you don't want sugar, but you want your drink to taste sweet, you can have natural sugars. Otherwise, you're fucked and eating synthetic stuff no matter what?

Almost all of those substances - in moderation - are food-safe and no more dangerous than eating sugar, or any other natural food. Some people might collapse and die from a single exposure, others it will make ill, others it will upset them a bit, but the vast majority will just eat it and get on with life.

If it worries you, go back to eating sugar.

Re:Sucrose question

[JustNiz]

Yeah I'm not sure I believe anything the FDA says or that they put the interests of the public first.

About half of their funding and much of their upper management comes directly from the drug industry. The FDA seems to be the very definition of a fox watching the hen house.

Re:Sucrose question

[Anonymous Coward]

Those whacky Europeans, using MSG as a sweetener.

Re:Sucrose question

[AthanasiusKircher]

and sucrose into a "not great, but way better than anything artificial" category.

My question is: Is my paranoia scientifically justified?

When you imply that sucrose is not "artificial," then obviously what you say is not scientifically justified.

Sucrose doesn't occur naturally in significant quantities -- it needs to be extracted from cane or sugar beets. If you actually tried to eat the amount of sugar cane required to equal a can of Coke, you'd probably end up screwing up your bowel from excessive fiber intake.

The reality is most sugars occur in nature in contexts where they have significant amounts of fiber or other nutrients that affect how our bodies process them. Honey is one of the few exceptions, and its composition is basically equivalent (other than trace minerals) to something like high-fructose corn syrup. Just that last statement can cause you to question the arbitrary divisions in the "nature" vs. "artificial" idea.

Anyhow, to address your question directly -- there are limited scientific studies that show various downsides to artificial sweeteners compared to sucrose, though they do exist. But there are also plenty of studies that show better results for various populations consuming sweeteners instead of sucrose (mostly in terms of weight gain, diabetes, etc.). As for "corn syrup" (which I assume means "high-fructose corn syrup," rather than the mostly-glucose stuff used in candy-making), I'm aware of only 1 or 2 studies that seem to indicate some sort of negative effect compared to sucrose -- most studies find no difference or don't actually compare HFCS to sucrose directly.

For Europeans, the problem with the American diet regarding sweeteners mostly has to do with excess sweetener consumption everywhere -- hidden sugars in all sorts of processed foods, etc. Whether those sugars are sucrose or corn syrup or some sweetener is often irrelevant, because there are simply too much of them, and even when some calories are saved by sweeteners, they are often made up by excess other calories or bad things.

In sum, if we ate quantities of sweeteners or corn syrup that would replicate the amount of sweetness we'd experience naturally eating most "whole foods" in nature (fruits, vegetables, etc.), we'd probably be fine. But most people are addicted to the excess sweetness found in everything...

Re:Sucrose question

[ledow]

And the other 89+ countries all colluded, I suppose?

Everything is a poison in sufficient amounts. Everything. Even water. Pretending any substance can be zero-issue is the problem. They all have doses at which adverse effects will appear in one, some, most or all people. Stay below a correct, proven, recommended dose and you minimise the problems. But still someone will have problems with it.

In the same way that we can't even make fucking bread (the staple of centuries, if not millennia) any more without someone dying or getting ill from it somewhere, an artificial sweetener will always have "that one guy" that can't have it. Rather than ban the substance because of that, just stop that guy having it, and set a dose to minimise the number of guys it affects.

That's what the UK do. That's what the FDA do. That's what all the other countries do too. Based on how many people react badly to the substance in experiments. This isn't politics of one agency in one country, this is globally-proven science and statistics.

Re:Sucrose question

[tehcyder]

The point is that avoiding artificial sweeteners will certainly not do you any harm, and unless you have a very weird diet it's unlikely you won't be getting enough sugar naturally in your food.

So unless you feel you have some sort of moral obligation to support the Pepsi and Coca Cola corporations, stick to water.

Witch hunt version

[Kohath]

At least for me, [witchcraft] gives me really bad migraines. Actually, it does it to my wife and daughters as well. And there are studies that show that it may be related to the rise in Alzheimer's.

The [entity] paying for all those studies saying that it's safe is [Satan], who doesn't have the best track record for being honest about what all their chemicals are doing (see honeybee hive death, different proteins in GMO wheat, pesticides, etc.)

Re:Witch hunt version

[Anonymous Coward]

At least for me, nothing at all will ever change my mind. Actually, nothing will change the minds of my wife and daughters either. And there are studies that show it may be related to my lack of education and embrace of religion.

The Kohath posting all of this nonsense is an idiot who doesn't have the best track record for being honest about what their beliefs really are.

Rat Poison

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Aspartame was used as rat poison at one point.

Not true pepsi is still using it

[Anonymous Coward]

They are only going to stop the use of aspartame in the usa. in many other markets they have no plans to stop

I can't use much Aspartame without reactions.

[SSonnentag]

I used to drink 2-3 44-oz diet pepsi cups every day. I soon was having seizures that sent me to the ER a couple of times. After months of trying to figure out what was causing the problem, I eliminated Aspartame and within 2 weeks all of the symptoms disappeared. So I am glad to see Aspartame being used less. Obviously, diet drinks of any sort are not healthful, for reasons mentioned by Calzones and others above, but it's still good to know market pressure can drive companies to dump FDA-approved additives for what the public experience has determined is a safer alternative.

Tough

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want sugar in your food, get used to not eating sweet things.

You'll feel better for it.

FDA says Aspartame is safe?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that it got rejected once.
then it got rejected twice.
then the boss was fired and replaced.
then it got passed.

was not because it wasn't safe? LOL.

aspartame is the shit of the ecoli bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know you are eating the shit of the ecoli bacteria everytime you eat aspartame?

mmmm yummy

Donald Rumsfeld is smiling wide.

Pepsi finally figured out...

[poemtree]

...how to get me to not drink their product. First they killed Diet Pepsi Lime, arguably the BEST SOFTDRINK EVA, but that didn't quite stop me. Now they will screw with the taste of the drink I have enjoyed for 20-odd years. Yep, that'll do it.

Diet Coke, too?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Oh well, Diet Coke is still better anyways.

The radio story where I first heard about this claimed that Coke was considering doing the same to Diet Coke.

Ungrounded Lightning (Rod) to Stop Using DietPepsi

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Aspartame has problems for some people (like my wife and brother-in-law) and not for others (like me).

Sucralose has problems for some people (like me) and not for others (like my wife).

Seems to me the thing for Pepsi to do is to bring out another formula - with a different name - using Sucralose, put them in the stores side-by-side (they get a LOT of shelf space to play with), and let the customers decide.

Changing the formula of an existing brand strikes me as a stupid move. I suspect Pepsi is about to have it's "New Coke!" moment...

Xylitol has no known tocxicity in humans.

[michaelepley]

Seriously misleading commentary, as it implies Xylitol is also not safe for humans.
Also, the commenter's calculations appear very off. The toxicity levels appear (via wikipedia) to be 500 – 1000 mg/kg bwt. So an average dog, say in the 30-40 pound range, needs 7 or 8 grams to have issues. And this is more than is likely going to be incidentally lapped up from a spilled diet soda, assuming you are otherwise careful about providing your dog access to bulk/unmixed Xylitol.

Re:Xylitol has no known tocxicity in humans.

[bluefoxlucid]

65-pound dog can die from 3g. A husky weighs 35-50 pounds. Toxicity at higher doses occurs in the canine liver; at low doses, a massive insulin reaction occurs, causing a blood sugar level drop resulting in effective starvation.

A 12oz bottle of soda has 30-60g of sugar in it (I've drunk sodas with 61g in a 12oz serving). That would be 15-30g of Xylitol, potentially as high as 1g/oz. Small and miniature dogs are currently in vogue, and would quickly die from as little as half a gram (a few laps); a medium-size dog could lap up enough soda for a fatal dose in 3-5 seconds.

Dogs are popular pets.

Thoroughly Tested!

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing can be said for Glock's and AK-47's.

There's been a few articles lately about how published studies tend to be positive about the product, and negative studies are hard to find.

Oh, yeah, and it's the corporation making the product that usually funds the study.

So weird.

it numbs the taste buds

[Anonymous Coward]

The strange feeling on your tongue after diet soda is the aspartame hacking on your taste buds, pretending to be sweet.

it messes up your taste buds, big time.

Seriously, ask any professional chef or food taster if they drink diet soda, pay attention to their reaction.

Yes, formula difference?

[SuperKendall]

There has to be more differences in the formulas that just the sweetener me thinks.

I didn't phrase my post at all well, and ended off on a tangent... but this is exactly the question I meant to ask with my subject.

I'm really curious if there are other differences besides just the sweetener between diet and non-diet drinks.

The replacement, sucralose, tastes even worse...

[rklrkl]

Aspartame is being replaced in Diet Pepsi by sucralose, which is the worst-tasting sweetener I have ever encountered. Britvic, who license Pepsi in the UK, scrapped all their Robinsons sugared cordials ("squashes") in the UK this year. Simultaneously, they switched the no-added sugar squashes to using sucralose.

I taste-tested the sucralose-based apple & blackcurrant flavoured squash recently and it had a seriously nasty chemical aftertaste. It was so bad, I actually had to gargle with water afterwards to try to get rid of the very unpleasant taste. Needless to say, I'm now boycotting the entire Robinsons squash range after decades of enjoyable consumption of their (sugared) product.

"Now Aspartame Free" printed on cans.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the cans are still lined with BPA.

Re:The replacement, sucralose, tastes even worse..

[Red_Chaos1]

Funny, everything you say about sucralose is how I've felt about aspartame. It's super sweet then gives way to a chemical aftertaste that I find vile. I loved Pepsi One because it was close enough and had none of the aftertaste. Now it looks like they're going back. Good news for me. :)

Who's dense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad slashdotter! GO LAY DOWN! You know that buoyancy effects cannot be called "falling" or the lack thereof. Vector diagram it, and get back to me, umkay?

Re:Who's dense?

[rubycodez]

But every single object you see in your daily life has buoyancy, it has to be corrected when weighing things very precisely. And am also amused at everyone spewing the 9.8 m/s^2, that's only at ONE certain distance from center of earth's mass, it varies by height and is NOT a constant at all. They are just spewing high school level simple model without understanding.

Who's confused?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad slashdotter! GO LAY DOWN! You know that buoyancy effects cannot be called "falling" or the lack thereof. Vector diagram it AGAIN, and get back to me, umkay?

Who's an idiot?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, guy! You're still at this? That is a material strength issue. You could make the balloon out of lead and it won't pop. It'll still fall at 9.8m/s^2 inside that vacuum. Goddammit! I mean how have we kept the ISS from popping under all that pressure? *rolleyes*

Re:Who's an idiot?

[rubycodez]

You blather without having done experiment. In point of fact acceleration due to gravity increases as distance decreases, it's not a constant. It also varies with position on the Earth. You are just spewing at a high school level of understanding, again without experimental proof

Which company?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please share with us which company you are the CEO of? With the kind of quality control exhibited in your post, I want to make sure I don't accidently buy one of your "products".

Fucking hypocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

And I just read a twenty post argument you were just having with Thaylin above where you and Rubycodez were lambasting him for doing EXACTLY what you just did regarding Stevia. You saw a few products that didn't fit your narrative and you extended your bias to all products. I don't care one way or the other myself. I think all you fat asses should be drinking water instead of diet anything but your hypocrisy is what kills me. You did admit to making a rash decision above, so you see your error, but you just waved it off and kept on trucking. I've told you this before many times on here: you're a fucking hypocrite who can't even keep your lies straight. You're sad.

I don't get diarrhea from aspartame

[Anonymous Coward]

But I do get diarrhea from sucralose and erithyrol and stevia and truvia and all the other crap out there today.

People vs Science

[onthemightofprinces]

This sounds like another instance of the anti-science rhetoric which led to the anti-vaccination movement. Why people take the word of badly spelled Facebook links with captial-letter Tourette's over empirical scientific study and consensus is beyond me.

Or better yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fat guy on the internet sez:

Just avoid soda/pop altogether. It's candy in liquid form, no matter what the sweetener is. Drinking soda just isn't good for you, pure and simple. Avoid it.

Aspartame tastes great, what all the complaints ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspartame is my favourite of all the sweeteners and I've tried them all over the years.

I use it every day in my coffee and it tastes just great.

Fat Smat!

[DarthVain]

I do that.

However I am not doing it to lower caloric intake or because I am trying to watch my weight.

Bottom line is too much refined sugar is probably the worst thing for you. I'll eat as much fat and salt as I want, and not be as concerned. Avoiding the 100g of pure refined sugar that is in that drink is why I do it.

Avoiding sugar can be awfully hard to do in a lot of products. Opting for a Diet Coke or whatever is an easy way.

Mind you I put sugar in my coffee, I'm not a savage. I try to avoid it as best I can otherwise.

Good. Aspartame=migraines (for me)

[Teunis]

Aspartame has caused me migraines most of my life. (ditto sucralose actually)
No I don't know why

But having been hospitalized for it going back to when I'm 12 ... all I can say is - for me anyway, the stuff isn't harmless.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Put an end to the Donald Rumsfeld sugar

[MoarSauce123]

The FDA was about to not approve Aspartame. Rumsfeld then played every trick possible to delay a decision as the installation of Reagan (worst US president ever) was imminent. As soon as Reagan was in office the FDA was forced to reverse course and Aspartame was suddenly deemed safe making Rumsfeld a lot of money. Ye think they care about long term effects? As long as the Dollar rolls into the right pockets we get to eat whatever. If it has to be fake sugar I lean towards Splenda, which isn't great either, but it does not taste as nasty as Stevia. My prime choice is no sweetener / sugar.

It may be safe, but...

[cerkit]

Aspartame makes me physically ill. When Coke Zero first came out, it was aspartame-free. Then, Coke pulled a bait-and-switch and started using it. As soon as they did, Coke Zero started making me sick. I still don't think I'll try diet Pepsi, but this is a good thing. I hope Coke does the same thing.